| 2/21/2006 3:00:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| The Phillips window depicts a log cabin in a boat and was installed around 1890.
The Phillips window is one of three to have a crown in the design. (right)
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The Graham window, installed in December 1889, is one of several windows with a picture of a dove. (above)
Pictures courtesy of Christ Episcopal Church
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| The Phillips window is one of three to have a crown in the design. |
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History Preserved
Rededication of Christ Episcopal stained glass windows Wednesday
Peggy Vlerebome
Courier Staff Writer
The members of Christ Episcopal Church must have been disappointed when the windows were falling apart only about 20 years after their church was consecrated 156 years ago this month.
The church didn’t have funds to replace them, especially in the fashion that most churches of the time replaced windows. The leaders of Christ Episcopal suggested that church members buy stained-glass windows individually as memorials to replace the poorly made windows. Over the next 20 years, the 11 side windows in the sanctuary were bought as memorials.
The replacement windows were American-made, and therein lies their historic significance. While other churches replaced their windows with expensive European stained glass as soon as they could afford to, Christ Church never could afford to. As a result, the stained-glass windows at Christ Church are believed to be among the oldest American-made stained-glass windows in their original setting in the United States.
“The moral of the story is, there are worse things than being poor,” said Ann Grahn, chairman of the windows committee at Christ Episcopal.
The importance of having historically important windows reaches beyond the walls of Christ Episcopal Church, Grahn said, because they could be the draw for the tourism part of economic development for Madison.
The stained-glass windows at Christ Episcopal will be rededicated and celebrated at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the church, 506 Mulberry St. The rededication and a reception afterward are open to the public.
Special outdoor lights will illuminate the windows. There will be instrumental music, a Cornelius O’Brien lecture on “National Significance of Christ Church’s Windows,” advice on how to preserve the windows, and a rededication ceremony conducted by the Rt. Rev. Catherine M. Waynick, bishop of the Diocese of Indianapolis.
Note cards featuring pictures of parts of some of the windows will be sold at the church for $2 for one card or $10 for an assortment of six. There are two kinds of assortments, religious and secular. The cards also will go on sale Wednesday downtown at Whimsy, 133 E. Main St., and the Madison Art Club Fine Art Gallery at Main and Jefferson streets; and on the hilltop at Paint Depot/Yankee Candles, 511 Clifty Drive. Proceeds of the card sales will go into the church’s windows fund. Grahn took the photographs and graphic designer Bob Corum of Madison made them into cards.
The rededication will signify the end of a 10-year restoration project of 21 stained-glass windows in the church, including the 11 that were memorials and original windows that date from 1850. Those windows include the three large, lancet-shaped windows above the altar. The Henry Hannen Co. of Pittsburgh, Pa., which made the windows that later failed, also made the lancet windows. But the church vestry rejected the lancet windows for aesthetic reasons, Grahn learned in her research of vestry records.
The building committee chose I.C. and D.S. Miller Co. of Cincinnati to make the lancet windows that are in place now. They were installed in 1850.
Little is known about where the other stained-glass windows were made, or by whom.
Ninety individuals, couples and organizations donated money to pay for the restorations, and two grants were received. One was an Indiana preservation grant from the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, handled through the Cornerstone Society. The other was from the National Council on Public History Cornelius O’Brien Lecture Series at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
Jean M. Farnsworth, assistant director and board member of the Census of Stained Glass Windows in America, will deliver the Cornelius O’Brien lecture. Farnsworth, who lives in Philadelphia, Pa., is a stained-glass historian and conservation consultant.
Also on hand will be Mary Clerkin Higgins, a stained-glass artist, conservator and consultant, who also is on the board of the Census of Stained Glass Windows in America. Higgins was a consultant to Christ Church at the beginning of the restoration project. Her conservation work has included the Lady Chapel of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, Marc Chagall’s Peace Window at the United Nations, windows by such well-known artists as Tiffany and La Farge, and medieval and Renaissance windows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She fabricated the final two new clerestory windows at Washington National Cathedral.
The Christ Church windows were removed two at a time and taken to Wardell Art Glass Studio in Aurora, Ill. There, John Clark restored each window inch by inch, with assistance from his wife, Evelina Jarosz Clark. They will speak at the rededication about preserving the windows.
The music ensemble will be made up of Lynn Maricle, conductor and organist; Brook Reindollar, trumpet I; Brandon Johnson, trumpet II; Scott Cooper, flute; Jessica Taylor, clarinet; Kirsten Carlson, saxophone; Bridget Benton, French horn; Matthew Rayburn, trombone; Vernay Reindollar II, string base; and Chris Watson, percussion. Harpist Darlene Walton will play the pre-service music. The Rev. Richard T. Draper, rector of Christ Church, will give the welcome.
The rededication will take place in the sanctuary, where the 11 memorial windows are on the side walls.
Druggist Fred Harper was the first church member to take up the idea of having members buy memorial windows. He paid for a window installed around 1870 in memory of his parents and three of his children.
The last window installed, the Phillips window, was put in around 1890 and depicts a log cabin perched on a rowboat bobbing on water, a dove hovering above an opening in the roof.
In between in probable order — based on a story in The Madison Courier on Jan. 1, 1890 — was a window D.W. Stapp bought in memory of his sister-in-law, Emma Blackmore. John X. Reynolds bought the next window in memory of his children. The next two windows were bought by men in memory of their first wives, George G. Fenton and Dr. W.A. Collins. Sallie S. Graham bought a window in memory of her sister, Julia Strader Page. Joseph A. Moore paid for a window — sometimes called the Good Shepherd window because of its depiction — in memory of his father, Joseph M. Moore.
No one bought windows for about nine years, until George Middleton came to his mother’s funeral and bought a window in memory of his parents, James H. and Jane J. Middleton. It probably was one of three windows installed in December 1889.
The other two windows installed at the same time were bought by James Graham in memory of his wife, Sallie S. Graham, whose window is across the sanctuary from the window she had bought in memory of her sister; and by the Christ Church Sunday school in memory of its superintendent, Henry C. Sanxay.
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