Tom Venturella

Stained Glass Conservator

Conducted by Caleb Weintraub-Weissmann on November 18, 2019 at the Venturella Studio, New York, New York

Tom Venturella in his studio, New York, New York, 2019. Photo: Caleb Weintraub-Weissman.

Thomas Venturella is a stained glass conservator who has been based in New York City since 1969. He was educated at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago, and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. Since 1985 he has owned and operated the Venturella Studio, which has become known for the conservation and restoration of Tiffany windows. He has also designed original windows, often in collaboration with other artists. Venturella has completed works for the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, among many other institutions including universities, churches, and synagogues. He is a member of the International Institute for Conservation (IIC) and the American Institute for Conservation (AIC), and was awarded Professional Associate status by AIC, making him the first stained glass conservator in the United States to be so recognized.

Interview duration: 1 hour and 22 min.

Caleb Weintraub-Weissman (CWW): So where are you from?

Tom Venturella (TV): Originally born in northwest Indiana, went to school in Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago. And right after I graduated in ’69, I moved to New York.

CWW: Now, you were initially trained as a painter, right?

TV: Yes. 

CWW: could you tell me about that?

TV: Yeah, I was a painting major and my minor was photography, and basically I was always figure painter. I was more attracted to the figure than I was to landscapes and still lives; I find the figure far more interesting. I went from human figure to animal figure only because my paintings were getting larger. As I don't care for over life sized nudes, I figured, well, the next larger thing would be animals. A very good friend’s family had a dairy farm with sixty head of Holstein cattle. So, I was out there painting and photographing them. My paintings were life sized Holstein cattle, the black and white cows. And I was painting them primarily for the patterning on these animals. It was really incredible. I wasn't doing them in black and white. I would glaze the darker areas with Prussian blue and purples and deep violets and such. The glazes are layered one glaze over another, over another, over another giving you get this incredible depth of color in your paintings. And I was thinking, you know, all I have to do is simply remove the linen from the back and I've got glass. Because glazes are nothing more than very thin layers of very transparent glass—I mean, a transparent color. And so, what you're literally getting is the same effect that glass would have. Just colored glass. I'd always been intrigued with the stained glass anyway, because when I was a kid, I used to sing in the choir and I had my nose pressed right up against one of these windows. And thinking back, they were really pretty pedestrian windows. But there was something about light coming through that that was just really intoxicating.

CWW: [laughs.]

Tom Venturella holding a glass sample in front of a window, 2019. Photo: Caleb Weintraub-Weissman.

TV: And I had no idea what I was looking at. I had no idea how they even got to whatever was in front of me. But I knew I liked it. And as I say, I just continued painting and possibly the glass was just kind of lurking in the background somewhere and was coming a bit more to the fore as I was getting into the glazes. And I wasn't bright enough to figure out, well, let me just pick up the phone book and call a glass studio in Chicago and just go see what I can do. I had no idea, you know, so I'm just kind of futzing around, all on my own, learning how to cut glass and such. So what I came to New York in ‘69. I didn't know at the time that there was a war going on between the Chicago School of Painters and the New York School of Painters. And the New York School has always had a tooth against Chicago. They hold a long grudge. They were miffed because Chicago got the Columbia Exposition in 1893 and in New York didn't. And New York really got its nose bent totally out of shape on that one.

CWW: [laughs.]

TV: So anyway, I gave up my Chicago galleries and moved here and couldn't get into a gallery. And I thought, well, I may just see what happens if I do this glass thing. Two weeks after I got here, I walked into a glass studio and asked if they needed someone to cut glass and a guy gives me a glass cutter and a paper patter, and a piece of glass and said, cut it. So I hacked my way through, and he looks at it—and this was this Friday, he says, well come in on Monday. So I came in the following Monday. I was there for about a year and a half. With him I learned the rudiments of glass cutting and just what designing in glass was about. I was with this studio three different times. First time was about a year and a half. And I was back with him for maybe a couple years from ‘77—1977. Around that time I said, I've had it with this country so I'm out of here. I took off and moved to Europe for a while. I was thinking I could work there, but the problem is: France doesn’t need me. They've got a ton of good glass painters and glass cutters. And so I just continued to travel around, starting off in Madrid then to Paris. After that I went to try to find some relatives in Croatia without luck, so from there I went to Firenze—to Italy and stayed there for a while. And then while I was there, I went down to Siena because I was very, very influenced and impressed with late fourtheenth, early fifteenth-century Sienese painting. It's really incredible. I figured I got to find out where all that stuff came from. And then eventually I decided, okay, it's time to give the states another try. So later in ‘78, I came back here and then went back to the same old studio where I had been from ‘78 until I left. I think it was ‘84 or ‘85, one of the two, I can’t remember now.

CWW: So was the head of that studio, sort of like a mentor, in glass.

TV: Yes, He really taught me the rudiments. And while I was there in ‘69, the work that was going on in the studio was for new synagogue windows. And I looked at these windows that we were cutting and putting together. And I thought, this palette is awful—

CWW: [laughs.]

TV: The design is horrendous. And it was this voice in my head saying, oh, my God, what have you done? You've gotten to the wrong department. This is crazy. I can't do this. This is just really awful stuff. Two weeks later a Belgian artist [Benoît Gilsoul] came in and he had sketches for a church up in White Plains [New York] that he was doing. And the studio I was working for was going to fabricate them. I looked at this guy's color sketches and said, “these are fabulous.” The guy knew color. He knew how to draw. He could handle all of this. I thought phew [sigh of relief] I'll stay. It's okay. It's okay. And so in this sense, the two of them kind of became my mentors, the Belgian certainly did, while the first guy taught me what not to do.

CWW: Ah.

TV: And that's important. It really, really is important because you learn a lot from that. The Belgian artist taught me what to do and it continued to improve. It was great. So it worked out fine.

CWW: So when did you open up your own studio?

TV:
1985.

CWW: Okay. So right after.

Tom Venturella's workspace, 2019. Photo: Caleb Weintraub-Weissman.


TV: I remember the last time I was with that particular studio, I had a little vacation. And a very good friend of mine, Edgar Tafel, the apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, came to me and said that he was doing some work on the Louis Sullivan building downtown. There's only one Louis Sullivan building that we have here in New York City. He said that they were redoing the lobby and needed some glass work for it, and asked if I would like to do it. I said “sure.” So this is great, and as I had this studio here anyway, my vacation was spent coming over here and just chilling out, getting stuff done. I was able to get it all finished within the two weeks and installed while I was on this vacation. It was great. I mean, the sizes were correct because I took them. The installation went well. I selected and built the windows. They came out fine. And he was very pleased with them. Everybody else was very happy with it. I thought: this is nice, this is really, really—it would be great to work like this. And then I went back to work right after this little two-week hiatus. I remember standing on the bench in the other studio, putting a window together for the National Cathedral in Washington [DC] that we were working on. The owner had taken on a partner just about a year before I left. And the combination of the two was just nuts. I remember as I was working, this voice from heaven comes down and I looked up and saw both of them at their little desks and that voice said to me, “this is stupid.”

CWW: [laughs.]

TV: I looked up and said “Yeah, it really is” because I'm thinking I had such a wonderful two weeks with Edgar. That was just great. We got stuff done. It just moved nicely. It was time to move on.

CWW: Yeah.

TV: So that's how I came to open up my own studio. I had never any intentions of doing this because I didn't want all the other stuff that goes along with it all. The responsibilities of payrolls and the insurances means that when I walk out of here every night I have to take all of this responsibility home with me. When I was working for him, at the end of the day I was scot-free. I would pick up whatever I was doing the following day

CWW: Yeah. Was it a long time before you were able to sort of—support yourself?

TV: Oh, yeah, oh, yes. Oh. Yes. It was a stretch for a long time. And then there was one point where it really, really hit bottom. And a colleague of mine who was working up at The Cloisters at the time, approached me and said “I don't mean to insult you, but we have this job up at The Cloisters. It's going out to bid. Would you be interested in it?” And I’m thinking damn right I wouldn't be insulted, I need it!

CWW: [laughs.]

TV: She said “it’s just fabricating small diamond lights panels for an upcoming exhibition at the Met [Metropolitan Museum of Art] called The Luminous Image. They want the little medieval roundels for this exhibition to be temporarily installed into leaded glass windows, as they would have been in their original installation.” I think there were thirty or forty panels we had to fabricate. So, I filled out the necessary paperwork and gave them a number, and they chose us. We were supposed to be getting the artworks coming in all ahead of time. And I realized that when you're ordinarily building a window like that, the artwork would be fit in as the window is being built around it. I looked at this whole program and I said to my colleague, “we will never meet this deadline if we traditionally build these things like this.” We're going to have to build forty of these dummy panels and then when we get the artworks and we're going to punch holes in these panels and then install the roundels. It’s the only way we're going to make this work. So, I said to the Met, “as soon as you get the artwork in, trace it out on a piece of Plexiglas, so I know exactly the size. Get those plexiglass discs to me so we can work determine the exact size of the holes that need to be cut for each roundel. When we bring the panels up to the Met for the installation of the artworks, everything will go smoothly.” Well, the director of The Cloisters saw us in action and he loved the way they looked. He thought they were really, really terrific. We had a really nice working relationship with the curator. He was really good to work with. We didn’t have any problems. As we put the last window in its opening and I locked the case, the group of other workers applauded. I was shocked that—well that's kind of nice, you know.

CWW: Yeah.

TV: And then, one of the women in charge of the glass department at the Met, came to him and she said, “well, we have to put out another request for proposals, an RFP for this next set of windows that they needed to have done.” He said “give it to Venturella and don't give it to anybody else. Give it to him.” So that's what really then kind of helped us and got us known again as Venturella studio rather than the other one. Okay. Sorry to bore you.

CWW: No, no, that’s perfect. That’s sort of stuff I'm hoping for right now. [laughs.]

TV: Oh, well. [laughs.]

CWW: So, just to sort of go off the conservation aspect. How would you describe what you do? Like would you call yourself a conservator or restorer or an artist, craftsman sort of thing?

TV: You know, labels are always so screwy. Basically, if anybody asks that, we just tell them we're a conservation restoration studio. But as you can see, we're doing new work right now. We've done new work before, too. But I prefer doing restoration work to newer generally.

CWW: Can you tell me about that?

TV: Yeah. It's generally more pleasant to work with dead people than it is with live ones. But with restoration, the artworks already exist. And my job then is to basically channel the artist, go into whoever he or she is. Understand the particular windows we’re working on. What was their purpose? Where were they installed? And my job is to bring that object back to the artist’s vision of it, not my vision of it, but their vision of it. That's why I've got to know as much as I can. And I find that very interesting, because there's a certain percentage of history in there. And I love that. I love to get into the history of things and figure out what else was going on at that time. What are they influenced by? Why are they doing this? New work is interesting to a point.

Work-in-progress for a stained glass window at St. Andrew's Dune Church, Southampton, New York, 2019; Venturella Studio, based on artwork by Stephen Hannock. Photo: Caleb Weintraub-Weissman.

The window we’re working on right now is for a church in Southhampton. The artist. His name is Stephen Hannock, and his work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum. I always thought the Met dealt primarily with dead people. But I mean, this guy is very much alive and he does some very large paintings. And he got this commission to do this window out in this church in Southampton. And he talked to the director of 20th Century Decorative Arts up there at the Met. And he said, I got to do this stained glass window. Where do I go? And she said, go to Venturella and don’t go to anybody else. Just go right there. And so we're working with his full sized sketch and he's very good. And I look at this thing and I immediately start thinking, well, this is how we could go about this. So that's okay. I mean, it's a good, solid design. And my job now is to make that design of his, work. And I think we've succeeded, he's very happy with it. I've worked with other artists and I've designed some myself. I think I'm a better cow painter than I am a glass designer. I've designed a number of things, but I also like to collaborate. There's a woman who was working with us; she is a glass painter. And she started off basically as an illustrator and her work is beautiful. And we don't do that much new work, but I told her, I said, I don't know that group of people, the ones to reach about new work. Instead, I know, the museums, the collectors, those guys. You don’t need to not talk to other glass people about your work. You need to talk to architects, designers, these are the people you need to contact. Let them know who you are and tell them that they need your work. If you can bring those in we'll do the work for you. We did a secret society at Yale University with her. She designed it.

CWW: Huh.

TV: Well, she and I really kind of co-designed it. And we co-designed a couple of other projects that really worked out well. After that, we got one of the eating clubs at Princeton. So, we had that one to do. That was the Ivy Club. At Yale it was a secret society. We worked for them and put in a beautiful ceiling in one of their rooms, big skylight. And then we did another window, like I say, for Princeton, which was to commemorate the women who had broken the all-male barrier. Thirteen women broke this barrier and they wanted a memorial window to commemorate the event. Princeton’s colors are black and orange. So I suggested to Indre [Bileris] my thoughts about it, and then told her to just take it, run with it, see what you can come up with. She settled on monarch butterflies as the theme and I suggested that she abstract it as much as possible. But she came out with a beautiful design and we fabricated it. I'm a good color selector and Indre is extremely good at painting. Jim [Murphy] and I were both cutting things like a machine. And then he was assembling everything. So by the time he was done with it, you were looking at a piece of jewelry; it was beautiful. Really, really, really nicely done. And those are his strong points. And that's why people come here. So that was done. And then there was a new synagogue in Ambler, Pennsylvania, which is just near the Jersey border. They had a whole set of windows in their sanctuary done by my mentor the Belgian Benoît Gilsoul. The baptism window in the other side of the studio is one of his windows. The man was incredible, a really masterful, masterful guy. He died in 2000. The congregation moved into a newly designed building, a much bigger complex. And they said, “we now have a small chapel that’s going to need windows. We don't want copies of Benoît’s windows but we want something that's going to be as strong as his.” Because you walk into the sanctuary you see the incredible Gilsoul windows, we want a similar feeling when entering the chapel. So, in turn, I came up with a couple of designs and Indre ended up designing all but one of the new windows. Once we had the sketches approved, we had the fabrication down to a science. It was fun. It was really, really great because I get on a roll and I'm just pulling patterns off the easel and sticking them all over different pieces of glass, giving it to Jim. And he  cuts glass like a machine and we're waxing the cut glass pieces up and everything is all put up, I could look at it and see where the balance is, and if anything needs to be changed, we change it. Indre then gets the cut glass and then does all the painting. All the glass is then fired and then Jim leads all the panels; they really came out spectacularly well. So that's the kind of stuff I like to do. But when it comes to painting, that's a whole different level here because of the materials used. And I figured if I had a place that was large enough, I could cordon off a place for her, because you've got to confine all this dry paint dust, as it gets everywhere and into everything. But she ended up getting and taking a job out in California instead.

CWW: Oh, yeah. I think you—

TV: Yeah.

CWW: So, collaboration is really central to this whole sort of—

TV: —yeah, in particular, as far as restoration and collaboration it's Jim and me, you know, he's on the same page as I am. We will discuss things and we'll need to know what the goal is and we'll get there. But when it comes to new work, there's a different thought process because you've got you've got to start with this [knocking on the desk] whereas with the restoration, I'm going to look at something that already exists and then figure out now how do we deal with that? How do we undo any restoration that had been done previously, which is oftentimes the case. We're repairing somebody else's horrible mistakes and then we can move along. But collaboration is really, really great because it's not an ego fest, and that is extremely important to me. The egos are put aside, just leave ‘em at the door. There's no time for that nonsense. That's one reason why I don't belong to any of these glass organizations, because you go to these conventions and conferences that they have and it’s all just people patting each other on the back. “Oh, you're so wonderful.” You’re so—you know [blows raspberry], just go home and just get to work.

CWW: [laughs.]

TV: Just do it. Leave me alone.

Work-in-progress, Venturella Studio, 2019. Photo: Caleb Weintraub-Weissman.

CWW: I'm pretty interested in what you were saying about sort of getting into the mindset for the restoration work. So, do you do like a lot of research to get started? What’s the process there?

TV:
It kind of happens, yeah, yeah, absolutely. For years, for almost fifteen years, we were the conservators for the Morse Museum down in Winter Park, Florida. The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum, and that's the largest Tiffany collection anywhere. Most of their collection was purchased by Hugh McKean and his wife Jeannette, the founders and directors of the Morse Museum. They were called up to Oyster Bay, to Laurelton Hall, which was Louis Comfort Tiffany's home. Tiffany died in ‘33. And then there was supposedly this foundation that was to continue the Tiffany legacy. There was a major fire in this building in 1957, the place burned.

CWW: Mmhm.

TV: So, one of Tiffany's daughters had contacted Hugh McKean down in Florida because she knew that he was very much involved with this to the point that he actually was a student up at Laurelton Hall back in the '30s over a summer. So, she knew him and she said “we just had a major fire, and could you come up?” They would ordinarily come up during this spring vacation because they were both involved in Rollins College at the time. Tiffany’s daughter said, “can you come up save the magnolia window?” So he and his wife Jeannette went up to Laurelton Hall. There’s a photo of Hugh McKean standing in the midst of the ruins, and he proceeds to just buy as much as he could. He had it all shipped down to Florida. They had hired a company to pack everything very nicely and ship it down. Well, the mover thought he was would save McKean some money, so he didn't pack it—

CWW: [gasps.]

TV: —in any way, just threw it all in the back of a truck. And then to hold it down, he took these big tractor-trailer tires, and threw it on top of it just to hold it down. He bounced all the way down to Florida. So, McKean opens the truck, and from the look on his face is ready to kill. He almost turned it all around and said, just send it back and I want to see it. But he calmed down and just put it away and he just stored it. And he'd been there for years. In little by little, they would pull out a little bit more and they would get put back together a little bit more. And then I was called in there in January of ‘98. One of my colleagues a painting conservator said to me, “would you be interested in going down to the Morse Museum because they need to have some work done in there on their windows.” I said, where are they?” And she said, in Florida. And of course, my immediate reaction was, “no, I don’t want to go down there.” And I thought all right, so I’ll go down there. And we then started working there. They were very, very happy with what we did, and then we were asked to continue to work down there. And again, like I said, they would take something else out. And that was the wonderful thing about the research and digging into this whole thing about, knowing as much of the history as possible. There were fragments that they had from Laurelton Hall that were cast, leaded snakes with cobra heads. And the collection’s manager, Jennifer Thalheimer, said, “I have photographs that show these.” So we were able to look at the photographs. You could see where they were. I said, okay, now I know how this thing is supposed to go together. Then they had a couple of windows that just made no sense. And I said, that's part of this ensemble. Somebody had soldered them together. So we had to pull them apart, clean them up, and we could recreate this over-door entry for the museum, and we did. And it was actually the entrance to the to the art gallery that was at Laurelton Hall. So that's down there now, too.

CWW: So do you have to deal with—is it a common problem to have to deal with past conservation missteps?

TV: It's not uncommon.

CWW: You can really—I’ve seen some crazy examples.

TV: Oh, yeah. I've always say benign neglect is easier because there's a good chance that most of the stuff will still be there. It's just a mess. So, you could very carefully take it apart, clean it up and do a gluing or whatever conservation you need. Get that done and then get it back together again. But when you've got to pull apart somebody else's work, that's a problem. You saw that. You saw the ducks when they were here.

CWW: Yes. Oh, no. I just saw pictures of them, unfortunately.

TV: Yeah, oh, okay.

CWW: Actually, could you tell me about that again?

TV: Yes. “Ducks in Iris” is the name of the window. And it was made for the Paris Exposition of 1900 from Tiffany Studios. It was exhibited there in 1900 so that meant it was designed and built in probably ’98 and ‘99, just a couple of years before the exhibition. Are you familiar with Siegfried Bing? He had the window put into a big bronze Art Nouveau frame right after the exhibition. In the frame and standing on the ground, it must have been at least six feet tall if not higher, it was big.

CWW: So, he exhibited it in his gallery?

TV: Yes, he exhibited it in his gallery. And I think from there it was privately purchased. There are only two photographs of this window that appeared; both were contemporary photographs that appeared in some publications. And they were, of course, black and white. Once it was privately owned, it just kind of fell off the radar. It was purchased in the late '60s where it then went into storage, as is had been damaged. The current owner then went online, did their homework and said, we got to find somebody who knows Tiffany and see if they'd be willing to take this project on. And that's what they contacted us in 2013. A previous attempted restoration from another studio cut original glass down, which really screwed things up and now the design has to be brought back into the form it's supposed to be; now original cut pieces don't fit any longer.

CWW: Mmhmm.

TV: So we had to have new glass made to match. It was a big project.

CWW: So how do you source the glass?

Glass pieces, Venturella Studio, 2019. Photo: Caleb Weintraub-Weissman.

TV: Well, there used to be a lot more sources available, but within probably about the last ten years, EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] has really gotten down on people and a number of glass producers had to close. They were doing really good glass and that was fueled by the hobbyists because those are the ones that would be buying the glass all the time. You know, they love this Tiffany stuff. And so they'd be buying sheets and sheets which of course, these guys kept making. And for us, it would allow us to go in there and just really get some really good things and have it available. Well, when the bottom of that market fell out, all of a sudden it left a lot of us really up a creek without a paddle at that point so we’d go back to Kokomo, Indiana, which was one of the original suppliers to Louis Comfort Tiffany. He bought from them. So if they had what he needed, he was not about to spend his time on making glass that was commercially available. He’d buy it from Kokomo. The guy wasn’t stupid. He would spend his time and money on making glass that he couldn’t get anywhere else. Kokomo would help us. There's also a company out in western Pennsylvania called Youghiogheny, and they would help us. We go down there, tell ‘em “look at this” to see what we need. Give them a fragment and they would mix up batches that we'd have to buy a crate of it. That's why we got a lot of glass in there [motioning towards the workshop]. We worked with another artist who said “I know of your reputation and I respect what you do.” He said “I'll help you on this one” I said “great!” So, we went over look at stuff he had—he had a whole ton of glass. He said, “But I could also make it for you.” I said “really?” He said, “yeah, let's do it.” So he made glass and man, I tell you, right on the money. Right on the money. Really, really nice stuff. So, we—he did work for us with that window—he helped us with that one. He helped us with the ducks. The ducks was really tough because that original glass was experimental glass that Tiffany had created. And, you know, he wasn't buying any of that stuff commercially. So we just had to figure out how to replace that. And make it work.]

CWW: Okay.

TV: Yeah.

CWW: Yeah—so this is sort of different—do you feel like the conservator’s hand should be hidden in the restoration or should it be visible in any way?

TV: It depends, I mean, I don't think that that's something you could just take a broad brush and just wipe it across everything. In a stained glass window, I would say it should be invisible. You don't want it visible. Go back to the intention of the original artist. And so keep that, then you think about—okay so what about all the missing noses and fingers of Greek statues and stuff like that? Do you put those back? It’s out of my field.

CWW: Yeah, I guess that can really depend on different—

TV: Yes, I mean, with this thing, guys wouldn't know. The whole idea is you want to see what's going on with light coming through it. You're working with light, you're looking at light. You're not looking at reflected light, you're looking at transmitted light. So, you need to understand that as best as possible, then you put it back together to what it's supposed to be.

CWW: Hmm.

TV: Now, of course, they will argue this with maybe some medieval work. I don’t know. It depends on who's the owner, whether it's a museum or private collector. How are they going to change it. So keep in mind what it's supposed to look like and what its original intent was and then work with that. Don't say, "oh, you know, I would’ve put it in this instead." And then go ahead and put something else in. And they'll do that. Yeah. I've watched some so-called Tiffany windows grow over the years. There was one little landscape that was trying to pass itself off as a Tiffany window and it showed up in the auction houses back in the '80s and all of a sudden it shows up again in the '90s. Now all of a sudden, all of the trees in the background just got bigger, the sky got smaller and the tree got bigger. Somebody was in there. Something happened.

CWW: So why, Tiffany? Why? I understand, I definitely believe they're incredible. But why has Tiffany had such a long lasting effect?

TV: Well, I think that he always went out on the skinny ends of the branches with stuff he was doing and the workmanship was beautiful. The finished product was substantial. It was really well-made. They were generally really thought out. They were beautifully built. And I say that because of his competitors, his contemporaries. People would go to other studios because not everyone could afford what was coming out of Tiffany studios. They wanted it. But for some reason they felt that they couldn't afford it so they would go to somebody else and that somebody else was always cutting corners somewhere, always so that they were “yeah I'll give it to you cheaper.” No selection or the selection at best is really pretty awful. And they're not as well-built. You know, they're not made well. There's more integrity with the work from the Tiffany Studios. Listen, when I first started working with Tiffany—on any Tiffany window—I always thought that Tiffany was the equivalent of something maudlin and old fashioned. I just dismissed it out of hand. But I was intrigued with how these windows were built. These are really amazing. And then I started to look at the glass that he was making. The glass is gorgeous. There was a tulip shade that just left here this morning. You should have seen spectacular glass, really, really nice stuff, beautifully made. His contemporaries couldn't do that because if they did, they'd have to be pricing at the same price he was. And they didn't have the glass that he had because they're just working with contemporary glass, you know, commercial glass. They weren't making their own glass, Tiffany was because he couldn't find what he was looking for in commercial glass. He wanted this, he wanted that. And he would say, get into the furnaces and make it for me. That's what we're going to do. And his colors are different than what was commercially available. What commercially sold and still commercially sells are the colors right out of a crayon box. He didn’t buy that stuff. He'll gray everything down and make it really sophisticated. Pulls it to another level. It's nice.

CWW: Are there many other conservators working with Tiffany glass? Is there are a lot of competition, so to speak?

TV: Not a lot. Not a lot. There's a couple out there. But I think their workmanship speaks for themselves.

CWW: You mentioned to me that you moved into this workshop in the ‘70s. Can you tell me about that?

TV: Yeah, I came back from Europe in ‘78 and one of the guys I knew of—knew from the old studio that I'd been in said “I got this studio over at Union Square.” And he said, “would you want to share it?” Because he was needed to have help with the rent. I said, yeah, sure, it was a good idea. I always like to have a studio space, a place to work somewhere. So, I went in with him but he was actually living here illegally. This is not a residential building, it's just commercial space. There is no hot water. The bathroom is in the hall. There's no showers or tub or anything else like that. You know, that's not how it was set up. But he was living here illegally, and when I would come in, he’d wrap up whatever he was doing from the night before, be out of here by around nine, ten, in the morning. And I would have to be out of here by five o'clock when he would come back and he was cooking here. And I thought, god, your cooking here with all this lead and everything else, which is a little nutty. And he was a young kid. But there are no creature comforts here. He was getting sick. He’d get the flu. He’d get a cold, and his bed was nothing more than a little prayer rug that he would sleep on, on the floor. And I said to him one day, I said “Stephen, you need one of three things: either a girlfriend, a mother, or an apartment.” And he finally took up the apartment point. I think he had a girlfriend on and off. But even more than that, you need a place that you can call your home. You need to be able to take a hot shower. You need to be able to crawl into a bed and sweat this out, if you've got a cold. You know, you can't get better living like this. And at one point, he finally said, I think you're right. He said, “I'm going to leave, do you want the lease?” I said, “yeah I'll take it.” So I kept it while I was still working at the other studio, from ‘78 to ’84 or ’85 or whatever it was, for that many years. And the rent was really cheap at the time and it worked out okay. Still had to struggle though to make it work. But I thought I can't let this go because well, what else am I going to do?”

Work-in-progress, Venturella Studio, 2019. Photo: Caleb Weintraub-Weissman.

CWW: Was it a very artistic community back then?

TV: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you mean in this—

CWW: —sort of area?

TV: In the area? Absolutely. And then in this building—well there, there were a lot of artists all around Union Square. The spaces on the west side of the Square were the ones that were really sought after but it was more expensive on the west side than it was on the east side. We were always the stepsister [knocks on the table] of the west side, you know. But the rents were good, I didn't come here to be glamorous. I came here to get some work done. There was a glass artist across the park, on the west side. He seemed to be making money hand over fist. And he had these new commissions and he was doing this and doing that. He'd invite me over once in a while I’d go see what he was up to and then I’d come crawling back here thinking, what am I doing wrong, you know? But I couldn't admire what he was doing or his lifestyle. It was just nothing I could relate to. So, I thought, don't get upset, don’t get bent out of shape about this. But there were a lot of artists, and when this building was built, the top floor—twelfth floor was made for artists. That's why the whole skylight system is all up there.

CWW: Oh, yeah, yeah. So, you mentioned to me that you have sort of made a deep connection to Italy. How has this influenced your work?

TV: Well, you know, aside from the fact that my family's from there, or half of them are anyway, it's influenced my work because it goes back to the painting again. The painters that were there back—again, back to late foureenth, early fifteenth century, Sienese painting. There's something about it that is just absolutely incredible. And it was interesting, again, in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century the Italians were still working and there was one in particular, Modigliani, who was an incredible painter, really, really fabulous painter. And it's funny because I'm reading about him and seeing photographs of his studio. He, too, was very influenced by the Sienese in late foureenth, early fifteenth century. Simone Martini, Lippo Memmi. It's the way the figure holds in the space, it's in the way he handles it. That is just great. And being a figure painter, I think is possibly another reason why I've always been more drawn to figures than I have to still lives. I mean, I had to crank out enough still life paintings and I can't remember doing any landscapes per se. But that was just never an interest to me.

CWW: Hmm.

TV: It was that, and then the other influence again was figurative painting. But it goes back to the eighteenth dynasty in Egypt.

CWW: Huh.

TV: The tomb paintings are gorgeous. In the eighteenth dynasty, doesn't get better. It's absolutely incredible.

CWW: I’ll have to look those up later.

TV: Oh, yeah.

CWW: Eighteenth huh?

TV: Eighteenth dynasty, especially under Setti I, Ramses II, and I think Merneptah came after him. But that whole group. Now, these are just the pharaohs. But, you know, they had all the artists that were doing the work for them.

CWW: Yeah, I suppose those names don’t come down to us.

TV: No, no, not too often. A couple do, but not many.

CWW: So, do you usually work directly with clients when get these commissions?

TV: Yes. I want to sit and talk to them. Especially if it’s going to be something new. When it comes to our clients and us, clients will come to us because they've got Tiffany windows and they want to go to the best to have them restored. When it's new work, they'll come to us, oh, jeez, I don't know. I guess they'll go to the website. Got do that web—modernize that website a little bit. It's getting a little old here, but they'll come to us that way. With a new client who wants a new work. I've got to talk to them, got to want to find out what they're thinking. I want to show them what's available. Tell me where you want this thing. Tell me what you're lighting situation is. What what's the orientations—are we talking: north, south, east, west, all this kind of stuff. I had a contractor call me years ago. He called me and he said, I have a client who wants a new window. He's got a repair and he wants a new window. I said “Okay.” I want to talk to him or her, whoever it is, to find out where this is supposed to go and what they wanted to do. Well, I can’t. He’s a very, very important musician and very busy. I said “I don't care. I just need to talk to somebody.” I want to show them what's available. I want to get a feeling of what they need. I don't want to make something for this person, only to bring it to them and have them say that's not at all what I want, even though you'd pay me for it, I don't care. The money's not the important thing. It's everything goes before that. He kept going on and on about this very important musician, yada, yada. And I said, “look, I just need a hot second with this client, that's all I need. Let me make a contact here.” If it was for you, I would be talking to you. So, he said, well, meet me at the Dakota on Friday. And I have running through my head screaming as loud as possible: Arthur Rubinstein, Arthur Rubinstein. And I'm thinking, "oh, my God, if it's Arthur Rubinstein I will be a complete blithering idiot. Just I'll be all over myself. It'll be incredible.” And so, he called me and he said, well—I guess he called me the night before—he said, I guess I may as well tell you it is, and I said “yeah” and I got Rubinstein screaming in my ears, and he says it's John Lennon. I said, “Oh.” And I thought shit, what happened, to Arthur Rubenstein?

CWW: [laughs.]

TV: So I had to go meet John Lennon and did—Yoko Ono and Sean was a little kid at the time. And I have to admit that John Lennon was very nice. He said they had just done a tarot card reading on his son, Sean, who had just been born. And it was apparently a really good reading. He wanted that reading made into a stained glass window. I said we could do that. I said this would be very exciting, it’ll be kind of fun. And then he went to Washington. He and Yoko had to go to Washington for whatever it was. And then he said, we'll get in touch when I come back. And right after he came back, then he was shot.

CWW: Wow. 

TV: So that didn't happen. But I was never a big Beatles person anyway, but it wasn't Arthur Rubinstein. The closest I ever got to Arthur Rubinstein was I got to meet his daughter. And so she was a good friend for a while.

CWW: Wow, that was an interesting story.

TV: It was hysterical because I was still working at the other studio at the time, and one of the young women over there, when she found out that where I had to go, she said, "I will do your laundry for the rest of your life if you bring me with you" and I’m thinking "jeez, you know, that's a pretty good deal." [laughs.]

CWW: [laughs.] I had to feeling that's where it was going to go when I heard “The Dakota.”

TV: I didn't know!

CWW: [laughs.]

TV: I had no idea! I mean, for that matter, I didn't know where Arthur Rubinstein lived either, you know?

CWW: Yeah.

TV: Who knew? Who knew.

CWW: So how long do you usually work on one project?

TV: Oh, God.

CWW: Is there any sort of average?

TV: Nah, it depends on what the project is. I mean, if it's going to be something like the eighteen-foot Tiffany window from Second Presbyterian, it'll take you—take us nine months to a year to do it.

CWW: So what are you working on right now?

TV: Well, right now we're finishing up the Southampton window. Oh, we're doing some diamond lights for The Cloisters up in the library. We've got the Chanler windows but we're waiting for the frames on those to be finished. And then when they come over here then we'll be setting all of the panels into the new frames and then getting those out of here. What the heck else is there? Something else is lurching, well, there's another large window from Second Presbyterian that’s got to be done. So hopefully that'll come in very shortly.

CWW: If you had to recommend any Tiffany window in the city that somebody should go see. Doesn't have to be something you work on. Just like, an amazing example.

TV: Good question. I mean, there’s the one in that crate that's—that's something else. Um, I don't know. You know, the obvious one is up at the Met, which is the autumn landscape. That thing is a killer window.

CWW: It really is, yeah.

TV: People talk about going up to St. Michael's, which is 99th near Central Park West.

CWW: I was actually just there on Tuesday.

TV: Were you?

CWW: Yeah, there was a glass forum.

TV: Oh right. Yeah. Yeah.

CWW: Unfortunately, the meeting was at seven o'clock at night—

TV: So it was dark.

CWW: —so it was pitch black.

TV: Yeah. Nice. Who was talking?

CWW: Susie Silbert, who is a curator at Corning [Museum of Glass] right now.

TV: Oh, oh okay. This was just this past Tuesday?

CWW: Yeah, yeah. I definitely wish I got to see them when they were lit up in any way.

TV: you should go back if you can. I’m not enthralled with the middle one. Not that set, it's St. Michael and all the bands of angels?

CWW: What is—I’m trying to think of how to word this— so when you—what is sort of the process, when you receive a window—

TV: What's the process?

CWW: Yeah. What's the process?

TV: Now, primarily for restoration, correct? Yeah. Yeah. We've got one here now. It's been created in. What we usually do is take photographs of it. If it's a single layer American window you just take photographs of it from the front, you don't have to do photos on the back. If it's a Tiffany window, it usually has plating on it, which means that the leading pattern is different on the back than it is on the front, so you got to record that. You record that in transmitted light and in reflected light. Then you do rubbings of the window, assess it if it's going to be completely releaded. Then after the photography is done, rubbing of the panels would be done. Then the panel is laid face down the back of the leads are peeled off and then that lead network is taken and sewn to a piece of foam core like that and that [pointing to ones hanging on the wall]. That's the top of that window. It's just my ceiling isn't high enough. It was a double lancet window. You can't have enough photographs. So when you're releading these panels, they've got to look as though they were done originally, in the same leading pattern. So when you have questions, you can just go right back to that and say, okay. So that's how he’s doing it. And so I got to get that back and get that right. So these are guides.

CWW: Ah.

TV: And they're extremely important to get the thing to look correct. So, in this particular case, I had lead—some of the leads pulled from this window, cleaned off of as much solder as I could, to analyze them and discover the lead content. It turns out that it is basically 99.6% lead, which I suspected. Then we have new dyes that are made so that we can have new leads. To get, for example, a quarter inch profile lead in contemporary lead, the hearts of the leads will be too fat. The hearts of these leads were thinner, so I need to have them thinner again, otherwise, the thing starts to grow and will never relead properly. That's why you really can't relead a Tiffany window with contemporary leads. And if anybody tells you they are doing that, they're probably cutting glass down to fit in.

CWW: Hmm.

TV: Because there's just too much lead in the new lead cames. We had a job for the House of Representatives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the state capital around 1990. And I think I may have told you, there were fourteen windows and I took seven and a colleague of mine took the other seven. My colleague Dieter was making his own leads. God they were gorgeous! They were the Bentley of leads.

CWW: [laughs.]

TV: They were beautiful. Got the hearts right. Everything was great. It was like glazing with pasta. Really, really incredible. And I was releading them completely with all of his leads that he was giving me. It was funny because he said to me, “how do you do that?” I said, “What you mean, how do I do that?” I said, “I do it with your lead!” He said, “Mine keep growing.” I said, “How?” I don't know how they are doing it, but I was able to relead mine with his lead and he was, instead of releading his, he was taking copper foil and copper foiling his back together again. Well, that's one way of doing it, but I really would rather not do that. But that's what those things are all about [motioning toward the lead frame on the wall].

Lead frame, Venturella Studio, 2019. Photo: Caleb Weintraub-Weissman.


CWW: So cool.

TV: They are cool.

CWW:
Do you mind if I take pictures of them?

TV: Not at all! Yeah, sure, sure. As a matter of fact, it was a double lancet window. That means that there were two of these right next to each other. So, I had two of these and two of those. And the Morse Museum bought the other ones that I have. So, it's in their collection.

CWW: Oh.

TV: And what they did was if they took it off this crappy foam core and they had a piece of linen that was stretched as a canvas and sewed to that, it looks beautiful. Looks really, really nice.

CWW: Just the guide no—

TV: Just the lead pattern. Yeah, exactly.

CWW: I love seeing stuff like that because it really sort of—for somebody not, you know, initiated—it really helps you understand how these things are done.

TV: Yeah.

CWW: Yeah.

TV: I mean, every one of those, there was a piece of glass in those openings.

CWW: Yeah.

TV: I mean some of these are really tiny. I mean stuff right up at the edge. [pointing.]

CWW: Yeah.

TV: And he's [Tiffany] got little pieces of glass in there. And what was crazy about him is they have plates on them too. They’d have back plates to darken them down or whatever he was doing because this was up in the sky at that point the sky came down here and then it just continued up through this Gothic architecture. And there were a little acid etched stars that would appear, and they were quite beautiful. But again, like I say, this studio just it went to the far out ends of the branch to get what it wanted done. And if you wanted you paid for it. We had three windows from the Hotchkiss School out in Connecticut, and two of them were Tiffany Windows—there were little landscapes—one was what was a field of lilies and the other one was a field of poppies. They were small windows, they were maybe yea wide [motioning with hands] by no higher than six feet, maybe five and a half feet. And they were gifts from various classes, you know, dedication to their classes. And—I forget what year it was then the second year they went to Tiffany again. The third year, that particular class said that Tiffany was too expensive because those windows were sold to Hotchkiss for two hundred and fifty dollars apiece. And they said, well, we can't afford that for the next one. So, they went to Tiffany's competitor, which was Charles Lamb—Lamb Studios. And they did a much larger window. It was a Sir Galahad window. It was okay—

CWW: [laughs.]

TV: It wasn't spectacular, it didn't have any great glass in it. It had commercial glass in it, but they got it for less. And it looks okay. It did what it was supposed to do. The three windows were installed in a little chapel that they had on campus. I forget what year it was, maybe in the ‘50s, that this chapel was torn down to make room for something else. And then these windows were pulled from there. They were just in storage for a while. Not in crates. They were in a shed somewhere. And then,I forget what year it was that they get in touch with us, and they said, we want these appraised and we want them restored because we're—we're gonna have them installed in our new building. And I said, “Okay fine.” So, when we got them, and we got all the cobwebs in the straw for them because this where they also kept the lawnmowers, it was curious, at the very bottom of the lilies and the—the poppy window. There are these banners, leaded things. And it said dedication In memory of blah, blah, blah, from the class of whatever year it was. And all of that was removed. It was gouged out and those plates were taken off. They were acid etched plates with the names on them. So, they took all those all the plates off and that to me was a sign of somebody had their eye on these windows and they were going to put those up at auction. They were going to sell those.

CWW: Ah.

TV: And if you take the information off, you have no idea where they came from. They did this, I think, with the Lamb window. I think it was the same case, but we were able to find out who or which classes had donated, which windows. And then I was able to recreate acid etched inscriptions, to put back in. And everybody was happily ever after. 

CWW: Do you know how long before you got them the inscriptions were removed?

TV: No, I don't know. I have no idea.

CWW: Oh, okay.

TV: I think probably I wouldn't be surprised if it was maybe in the ‘80s, because at that time, late ‘70s and early-mid ‘80s, all through the ‘80s, people were stealing these windows out of mausoleums because they were getting really good prices for them. And you get a much better price for a landscape than you could for a figurative window. You could put a landscape anywhere. But you don't necessarily want a saint or somebody like that in your dining room, necessarily.

CWW: Yeah.

TV: But it was funny, so they also had them appraised. And the two windows that went for two hundred and fifty dollars, they pretty much maintained that number, but they added a few. So just move the decimal point. They were now to $250,000 apiece. And the Lamb window was, I think, valued at something like $60,000 dollars.

CWW: Hmm.

TV: Happens.

CWW: Yeah. Well, I mean, you've answered all the questions I thought of.

TV: Okay.

CWW: Really fascinating. Is there anything else you can think to add or.

TV: Not really.

CWW: Yeah.

TV: If you think of anything else you need to know, just holler.

CWW: Oh, sure. Yeah.

TV: That gives you enough to work with.

[End of interview.]

venturellastudio.com
Venturella in his studio. Photo: Caleb Weintraub-Weissman.
Holding a sample in front of the window. Photo: Caleb Weintraub-Weissman.
Venturella's workspace. Photo: Caleb Weintraub-Weissman.
Work in progress. Photo: Caleb Weintraub-Weissman.
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