Over the last few months I’ve been working on a commission for an outdoor garden feature.  The brief was a stained glass leaf design to go above a garden door in the back of the client’s terraced house in York.

I designed a single curling fern pattern, and chose a variety of earthy green mottled glass that would show up some beautiful patterns in the light beaming into their back garden.

The transom piece was installed above their wooden garden door with a piece of shatter-proof glass on the outside to protect it from the wind and outdoor elements.

After agreeing the design, the first stage involved drawing out the pattern to scale on a flat board – this is called a cartoon. I then selected the glass, and cut and ground each piece by hand to fit the cartoon.

Once the pieces were cut, the next step involved applying copper foil around the edge of each piece before soldering the all together with flux and lead.

Here it is before installation in the workshop after I finished soldering it – the client was pleased (-:

“We were overjoyed which the stained glass piece Maya crafted for us, it exceeded all expectations…we enjoy it every day!”