The Holy Trinity & Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Cathedral, located in Birmingham, Alabama, houses original stained glass windows that were handcrafted in the 1950s by Greek artisans. The church experienced an unfortunate vandalism event that resulted in significant damage to one large stained glass window that features hand-painted and handblown glass. Because of the historic nature of their windows, the church wanted to make sure they could truly replicate the glass with no visible differences between the repaired window and their other existing windows. The church was also working through an insurance claim because of the vandalism damage.
The church researched several companies for bids including ours. Even though our price ended up being a bit higher than the other bids, the church thought we were the best candidate since we were able to show various stained glass replication and restoration work in our portfolio. They insisted that the insurance company choose us to complete the work.
Once approved, we removed the windows and took pieces of the glass to have custom manufactured so they would be the exact color match to the original glass. We hand-painted in the same style and tried to forge the original painting style with several different brush types. It took about 10-12 experiments with the texture of the paint and various paint brushes to get it exactly right. Once all the broken glass pieces and hand-painted pieces were restored, we were able to create a successful restoration and exact replication of the original windows.
After we installed the newly restored piece, no one could tell the difference between the old windows and the new window. The church was horrified by the vandalism as this was their first time encountering this situation and was very sad that someone would damage their beautiful, antique windows but was grateful that this restoration successfully repaired it exactly to the way it was before.
Bring new life and beauty to your church with church stained glass restoration from Scottish. Contact our office to speak to a designer about your project or to receive an estimate on our services.