Word: saints
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...unprosperous artist, young Lawrence Saint worked in a wallpaper store in Pittsburgh's East End as "salesman, janitor and general pack-horse," was made color conscious by his merchandise. Against his father's advice, Lawrence Saint apprenticed himself to a stained glass artist, scrimped and saved to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. At this time a deep religious experience led him to join the Presbyterian Church, worry about the propriety of painting nude females. Ribald fellow students tied him up, carried him by force to a model's stand where an undraped woman...
Because devout Mr. Hildrup was reading the 14th Chapter of St. John when he died 20 years ago, Lawrence Saint used his memorial windows to show eight scenes from the same Gospel. Decked in calm crimsons, blues and yellows, like their 13th Century counterparts, Mr. Saint's saints & sinners glowed from the glass with equal clarity. A cringing Peter denied his Lord. Judas fingered his 30 pieces of silver. Jesus announced to Thomas, "I am the Truth." Jews in the Temple treasury were told, "The truth shall make you free...
Assisted by three of his seven red-headed sons, red-bearded Lawrence Saint made the Hildrup windows, like all his stained glass, in traditional medieval fashion, from the "cartoon" or original drawing through the firing and blowing of the glass to assembling a mosaic of 2,850 variously colored pieces in the two 10-ft. windows. The clear, simple details were added later with a needle-fine brush. In his big, cluttered studio and furnace, a converted barn at Huntingdon Valley near Bryn Athyn, Pa., Artist Saint has 1,500 color formulas based on chemical analysis of glass going back...
Shortly afterward, despite his absence from the life class, he won a $500 traveling scholarship. Wandering into the Sainte Chapelle in Paris just as the sunset struck its windows, Student Saint was overwhelmed by the "solid walls of jewel-like color - rubies, sapphires, golds, topaz tints, amethysts, Tokay grape shades and whites like old lace." His interest solidly caught in this religious art, Lawrence Saint lost no time in becoming an expert on stained glass, made 50 notable illustrations for the famed Stained Glass of the Middle Ages in England and France by English Expert Hugh Arnold...
...building of the Bryn Athyn Swedenborgian Cathedral was started by Raymond Pitcairn as a medieval craft centre. Lawrence Saint worked enthusiastically on its stained glass for eleven years, studied his subject more & more deeply, often wished he could completely approximate 13th Century windows by making his own glass instead of using the "stock" colors of commercial furnaces. Then one day he chanced to see in a yellowed newspaper clipping a photograph of the architect's model for the National Cathedral...