stained glass gallery

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St. Vincent dePaul Parish
Richboro, PA | Website

La Salle College High School Chapel
Wyndmoor, PA | Website

St. Catherine of Siena Parish
Horsham, PA | Website

Private Commissions
A select portfolio of hand-painted stained glass commissions

Patrice Heinz Schelkun working in her studio.

"Overseeing the mysterious laws governing the universe, the divine breath of the Creator Spirit reaches out to human genius and stirs its creative power. He touches it with a kind of inner illumination which brings together the sense of the good and the beautiful, and he awakens energies of mind and heart which enable it to conceive an idea and give it form in a work of art."

— John Paull II letter to Artists, 1999

The art of stained glass dates backs centuries to the time of the medieval cathedrals of Europe.  Today colored sheets of glass are made using many of the same techniques as artisans long ago. 

Traditional stained glass used in the architectural setting is generally of two types: clear (known as “cathedral”) glass, or opalescent (American) glass.  Medieval artists, as well as those who adhered to their tradition in Europe and elsewhere, used clear, colored glass on which they applied layers of paint in order to modulate transmitted light.  In essence, they created a painting in glass. Today, many of these same techniques are used.  Vitreous pigments — that is, pigments made with ground glass particulates — are hand-painted onto pieces of glass and then fired in a kiln at extremely high temperatures in order to fuse the paint with the glass.  As single piece of glass may be fired four or five times before the desired effect is achieved.

Americans  Louis Comfort Tiffany and John La Farge were artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who broke from earlier traditions in stained glass.  They used primarily semi-transparent or translucent colored glass for its inherent beauty with little or no paint applied to the glass surface.  A familiar example of this type of stained glass work is seen in Tiffany lamps.

Patrice Heinz Schelkun, because of her background and experience as a painter in other mediums, focuses primarily on painted glass as her preferred technique in creating stained glass designs.