December 2003

Shining Through

The centuries-old art of stained glass is alive and thriving in Ferry Brannin’s American Art Glass studio

by Irene Bowers

In the beginning there was darkness over all the earth, and God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light, and God saw that it was good.

A couple of cosmic blinks later, human beings got around to refracting it.

Light gets refracted, or bent, through glass. Lightning and volcanoes occasionally form glass; glass exists on the moon and in meteors. People have refined glass for its utility and beauty. One form that has remained essentially the same for centuries is stained glass, and the most prolific refractor in the area, the big bender of light, is stained glass artist and restorer Jerry Brannin of Norfolk. Hardscrabble, bushy-bearded Brannin taught himself the craft over 30 years ago because he had to pay rent, and he still hasn’t lost his suspicion of anyone who fawns over him. Or glass.

Q: How do you feel about working with this amazing art form every day?

A: If I’m stupid, I get to bleed on it.

If you hang around him long enough, he’ll drop a few words about the glowing windows that grace churches, ships and private homes in Hampton Roads (he’s worked on more than a thousand). And he doesn’t mind if you breathe his smoke as he labors in the American Art Glass studio over several projects simultaneously, while his 20-year-old son Alex keeps his gaze steady on the work and ducks questions.

Q: Jerry, is Alex an apprentice or a partner?

A: He’s a prisoner.

That lifts Alex’s head. An accomplished artist in his own right, he credits his father and the Governor’s School for the Arts with his training.

“He buries me,” says Brannin of his son. “He’s been coming into the studio since he was four; one of the first things he did was trace his name in zinc. If he wants this life, he can certainly do it.”

Two sticks rubbed over a sand dune will not produce a glass goblet, but history holds that the sustained firing of sand, accidentally mixed with lime or potash, resulted in the molten form of silica we call glass. What’s certain is that in 3000 B.C., Egyptians and Sumerians were messing with this superheated material, eventually adding substances to produce color. Their paint boxes were minerals: cobalt brews blue; gold flakes run ruby red, and copper goes green. By about 1 A.D., wealthy Romans were glazing wooden frames or using alabaster pierced with glass nuggets for windows. It was only a matter of time before glass bubbles blown on the ends of long pipes were flattened into sheets for windows.

For the rest of this story, you can order the December 2003 issue of Hampton Roads Monthly magazine.