Stained Glass: A Piece of Charleston's History

By Patra Bucher
Photography by J. Kevin Foltz

Robert Hines' calloused hands have touched Charleston's history. His studio on upper King Street, well beyond the usual browser's pilgrimage, resembles a shop straight from the pages of a Dickens's novel. Rows of glass jars filled with brushes and other tools of his trade fill long wooden shelves, while massive handmade tables hold pieces of the city's past. A caretaker of much of Charleston's stained glass, the craftsman wanders daily through the city's history as it is revealed to him by the colors, textures, designs and techniques held within her windows.

Fate had designs on Hines early on. "At one point in high school I thought I was going to be a furniture maker," says Hines who owns Hines Studios. "I actually set up a little woodshop in my garage and made furniture and some doors. But it wasn't exactly using all my abilities."

While in college in Austin, Texas majoring in English literature, Hines took an apprenticeship in a glass shop. "The short of it is that I ended up doing two series of apprenticeships in two different stained glass studios," explains Hines. "After that, I did another apprenticeship in a hot glass studio blowing glass."

Hines' innate interests also included art and architecture. "I was also very interested in crafts... things that were made," he says. "I was actually applying to graduate school for architecture while working in stained glass. Architecture was first, and glass kind of fell into that because it is architectural art."

Hines' love of stained glass finally won out. "I knew it was something I liked and I knew I was going somewhere, but I didn't exactly know where. The next thing I knew, it really was my career." Fate smiled.

A colorist and a craftsman, stain glass suited Hines because it enabled him to use all his talents and interests. Then fate worked her magic one more time bringing Hines to Charleston. "I have relatives who live here," smiles Hines. "I visited and loved it and knew it was the place for me. I knew there was a lot of opportunity for me here because there's a lot of stained glass in Charleston. It's just funny how it all happened."

Today Hines spends much of his workweek restoring Charleston's stained glass. According to the artisan, much of the city's stained glass is more than 100 years old, and even some that's not that old is in serious jeopardy of deterioration. "The biggest reason is the protective Plexiglas or other protective glazing that was put up in the 1960s and 70s as a way to protect the glass from hurricanes and vandalism," explains Hines. "Churches wanted to protect their stained glass, but no one knew they were actually sealing in air and moisture that ruins the leading. There are many windows in Charleston just waiting to be re-leaded."

Hines is skilled in traditional stained glass techniques that produced the windows in the great cathedrals of Europe during the Gothic Age. He is also versed in the techniques developed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, an American painter during the Victorian Age.

When not restoring stained glass, Hines uses his skills to design and build leaded and stained glass windows for homes and other buildings throughout the area. Perhaps 100 or even 500 years from now, fate will provide another craftsman to restore and preserve the pieces of Charleston's history that Hines will someday leave behind.

A few of Charleston's notable stained glass windows include:

The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist
Corner of Broad and Legare Streets
The stained glass over the main entrance depicts the Coat of Arms of Bishop Northrop. The Papal Coat of Arms and the Coat of Arms of the State of South Carolina appear over the east and west doors. Meyer and Company of Munich produced the stained glass windows located over the altar. The 14 large windows along the sides represent the life of Christ, and in the clerestory are windows honoring the four Evangelists.

St. Matthew's Lutheran Church
405 King Street
In 1872 - the year the church was completed at its current location - chancel windows depicting the Crucifixion and the four Evangelists were unveiled. They were purchased from Henry E. Sharp and Son of New York.

In 1912, 12 American opalescent and stained glass memorial windows, probably made by the Quaker City Glass Company of Philadelphia, were installed in the side aisles. The two windows nearest the chancel with full-length portraits of Luther and Melanchthon replaced diamond-paned "quarry" windows bearing medallion or roundel portraits of the early Lutheran leaders.

After the disastrous fire of 1965, 16 of the 17 windows in the galleries and the organ loft were replaced. Only the window depicting the Nativity at the back of the church survived the fire. This and its companions, the Annunciation and the Holy Apostles, were products of the Hunt Studios in Pittsburgh. The gallery windows were from the studio of Franz Mayer & Company of Munich, represented in America by the studios of George L. Payne of Patterson, N.J.

The Unitarian Church
4 Archdale Street
The present church was created by reconstructing, refining and expanding an earlier building between 1852 and 1854. The stained glass window in the chancel is among the oldest in the city and dates back to this 1852 renovation of the church. The church was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974.

Grace Episcopal Church
98 Wentworth Street
The memorial windows of Grace Church are teaching windows, each containing scenes from the life of Christ, as well as representatives of clergy and layperson associated with the church. The first memorial window was installed in 1880 and the last in 1972. The altar window, the great rear window, four windows in the nave, two in the narthex, and 12 clerestory windows were all designed by the sixth rector, Dr. Ralph Sadler Meadowcroft. The largest window, located over the rear door, took more than a year to complete and contained more than 10,000 pieces of glass. A small window on the Epistle side of the narthex contains an angel with the face of a small girl who drowned on Sullivan's Island.

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