I was doing a spot of redecoration on the outside of our back door. Several sections of rock hard putty were breaking up and looked a mess, so I chipped away at them to remove them completely. Unfortunately I uncovered a tiny crack in the glass, which proceeded to ‘grow’ across the window over the following day or two. The glass was 12cm wide but well over a metre tall, so I knew it was going to be a little bit expensive to replace all of it. In addition to the price, it is lovely, wobbly, old glass, which I did not want to replace with uninteresting modern clear glass. I decided to do something completely different.
| This photograph shows the crack all the way cross the thin glass pane on the left, about 40cm from the bottom.
I noticed that it was at roughly the same height as the door handle on the right. This gave me the idea to have a corresponding square on the left hand side, too. |
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| Here is my radical solution: a glory star. These items are quite expensive, considering it is just a single, relatively small piece of glass. It was originally 12cm square. They are beautiful though and quite difficult to source. My supplier says there is only one person in the UK making these wonderful objects, as far as he is aware.
I recycled the broken plain glass; combining the pair into the panel shown opposite. |
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| Fitted and painted up it is a real eye-catcher as soon as you walk into the room.
How wonderful it was to create a unique and beautiful feature to mend a broken window pane in a door. |
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| From the outside. Very neatly finished with new putty and a paint job. |
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| And from the inside – fab.
Ok, I suppose it does look vaguely like something you’d find on a policeman’s helmet. |
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