Studio creates stained-glass pieces for homes, buildings
ASHLAND, Va. — Decorative Glass Solutions has been making stained glass and glass products in the Richmond area for 43 years. The panels it makes using hundreds of styles of glass bend light to accent a space and add to its ambiance.
The company has always thrived on receiving requests to create things such as an accent panel above a home’s front doorway or stained glass for churches. It’s now trying to reach a new market — commercial jobs — after recently picking up a few high-profile gigs.
Diane Fairburn started Decorative Glass Solutions the week after she graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in crafts in 1979.
Her custom work runs the gamut of styles, from traditional and contemporary looks to popular craftsman-style designs or glass inspired by architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous ideas.
Much like the way a sewing professional has a seemingly unlimited number of cloth styles to utilize, a glassmaker has hundreds of kinds of glass to work with among myriad colors, shapes and textures. Fairburn discovered she wanted to work with glass when she was attending high school in New Jersey. She undertook her first glassmaking project with a family that owned a store in the same shopping center as her dad’s shoe store.
“They had a lighting store where they sold lights and chandeliers. The father was a mechanical genius,” Fairburn said. “He was enthralled by Tiffany lamps; they made their own and sold them in the store.”
He got her started on her first glass project: an orange-and-red Tiffany stained-glass lampshade cover.
Later, she traveled to upstate New York with the family to see what people were doing with glass besides lamps. She saw that people made glass boxes, mirrors, full glass panels and sun catchers. She was hooked.
“My parents said, ‘If you want to do stained glass, that’s fine, but you have to get a college degree,’ ” Fairburn said. “I said, ‘OK, then I’ll major in crafts.’ ”
She opened a business checking account for Decorative Glass Solutions the day after she graduated.
Much of her work over the years has been in Tiffany stained glass. The 1900s technique — named for its inventor, Louis Comfort Tiffany — involves wrapping glass pieces in copper foil and then soldering them together. It allows for smaller and more intricate stained-color designs.
What started with small projects and selling to smaller retailers, such as specialty gift shops nationwide, has blossomed into a full-scale production business. Fairburn’s glass studio in Ashland largely produces glass panels for homes, buildings and churches in a range of styles.
The most popular orders are for transoms and sidelights on a home’s front door, which typically run around $1,500, depending on the complexity of the design. At the higher end, commercial jobs start at around $12,000 and can rise into the tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the size of a space.
Her team of nine people, about six of whom are production staff, can handle about six to eight jobs at any given time. They ship to people all across the country and make videos that they post on the company’s website or send to clients that explain to the customers or their contractors how to install a glass panel.
Although her jobs are typically split evenly between traditional and contemporary styles, clear glass has been a mainstay, she said.
“It doesn’t necessarily depend on the genre or what the project is. People like clear glass because once it’s installed, it goes with everything,” Fairburn said. “Colors are nice, but they make for more artsy designs.”