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The Stained Glass Window William Fais moved here in 1985 from
Mentor, Ohio. He taught 6th grade for 25 years in Ohio. William has a wide variety of
interests from making violins, canoe building, and stained glass. He started
to work in stained glass just because glass is beautiful. One of the other
teachers was teaching his students how to make stained glass sun
catchers. During this time a lot
of people were interested in having stained glass objects in their homes.
William became interested in stained glass. There was a store in Mentor that
had a huge variety of glass. William fell in love with glass at that time. He has made several windows for
churches (one is in the Cazenovia Baptist Church) and lamp shades. Many people in New Woodstock were
donating their talents and skills to make the new library beautiful. William thought that the belfry window
on the front of the building was quite ugly. So he decided to design a stained
glass window to fill the space. The window had 4 sections, each
section has a different theme: The first panel shows children and the
wonder of reading. It features a little girl reading to the Cheshire cat. The scientific world is represented in
the second panel. Einstein’s equation, math symbols, and 2 quark
symbols are all incorporated in this window. The third window panel features the
world, the Constellations Hydra, and the Red apple for Newtons Law of Gravity. Outer space-the world beyond the earth
is shown in the fourth window. The sun’s corona, Horsehead Nebula and
assorted stars fill the space.
(The stars were faceted zircons from an old bracelet that belonged to
Mrs. Fais’s mother.) William and Marilyn worked together in
their garage and it took all of the summer of 1996 to complete the job. Marilyn said that that was one of the
happiest summers that they had spent together. They started with a hand drawn cartoon
(a blue print of the design), the 500 glass pieces were cut and ground to fit
and assembled. Copper foil was
applied to the edges of the glass.
Then the solder was melted on to the foil. The solder won’t adhere to the
glass. That is why copper foil is used. The best part of the project was
choosing the pieces of glass and making sure that the palette was right. Marilyn and William spent a lot of
time deciding which piece of glass would be perfect for the specific spot. On October 26, 1996 the instillation
began. Gary Foster and William
had to scale the belfry ladder.
This was no easy feat.
They had to remove a large beam to install the window. The men were
looking at the back side of the windows.
This made the job even harder.
Gary completed the job by installing back lighting. Now the stained glass windows are
illuminated for all of us to enjoy.
Please take a few minutes to stop and take a look at this beautiful
work of art. You may have to crane
your neck, but it will be well worth your time. Also, in the library there is a scrap
book with pictures that Marilyn took during the process. |
