I have worked on a whole series of properties in Victoria Avenue, Surbiton and the latest has seen a major revamp to the frontage. These windows feature original Victorian stained glass bird roundels
The leaded windows fitted were quite simplistic and had been updated at some point but did feature some wonderful Victorian painted roundels of birds which it was important to build back into the new designs. The front door featured three original Victorian leaded lights and we used this theme to drive the design. Colour choice was important and we were able to rely on the traditional English muffle glass supplied by Kansa Craft to give just the right look.
The design phase was something the customer was interested in being involved with and choosing the colour palette and blending these to give a cohesive feel was the key task. Using very pale pink delivered the warm feel to the design matched to the border made up of colours to match the existing top lights
These pictures track the progress with the first picture showing the orange bordered lights which had been fitted probably in the 1970’s.
The exisitng windows
My first visit was focused on replacing the clear glass in the three top lights with the numerical centre light and the new top quarter lights
Three top lights installed
Once the top three were installed I then removed the door and side lights to strip out the painted roundels and rebuild them. The task of stripping these windows took over five hours as it was imperative not to break the precious and delicate roundels.
With all seven leaded lights installed and matched to the three originals the new look was complete:
The finihsed article
Here is a detail view of the door lights installed:
