Jutta is a friendly and inspiring teacher from Trentino Alto Adige. As part of her ongoing professional development as a Middle and Senior School teacher, she decided to update her portfolio of skills by taking a practical and intensive art course in leaded stained glass including painting on stained glass.
Jutta lives and works in the north of Italy, in a remote area where the locals still speak the ancient language of Ladin. Jutta is an art teacher and regularly expands her knowledge of different arts and crafts. In previous years she’s taken mosaic courses, but this year she wanted to expand her knowledge of this ancient and manual art. She took a week out of her her summer holidays for an art course designed to familiarise herself with stained glass in the idyllic surroundings of IKO’s studios.
Every student of ours is encouraged to bring some ideas with them about what they want to create during their time with us, and Jutta came here with several images of stained glass windows which she had found on the Internet. After looking at some of these, and some of the images from IKO Studio’s well stocked library, she decided that she would like to recreate a window by Karl Parson. One depicting St. Michael. The original window is housed in the church Saint Peter in Bardon Uk.
Jutta started work by drawing the chosen image, surrounded by a circle. Next she designed the cut lines and began cutting the glass and grinding it to perfection. Over the next two days, she practiced cutting and grinding, working on accuracy and speed.
Jutta’s art course then switched over to glass painting. Jutta became familiar with painting the tracing lines with the pigment mixed with oils, next she moved on to applying shading carefully to the design.
The course was demanding, and as one teacher to another, I’m a stickler for attention to detail, something that is a driving principle behind the work of IKO Studio and a principle we like to pass on to our students. But an intensive residential course at IKO Studio, is not without some rest and relaxation, which for Jutta came in the form of, a late night ice-cream in Orvieto, an aperitif in Civita di Bagnoregio. We were also delighted that Jutta was to celebrate her birthday with us, so we arranged a small party in the garden, inviting a few friends over to help celebrate Jutta’s special day.
On the final day of the course, after the cutting, painting, leading and cementing had been finished, Jutta cleaned her window and then together we hit the road, to pay a visit to Orvieto and Todi, to visit some more of the amazing local attractions that Umbria has to offer.
Jutta’s completed window was simply breath taking. Her St. Michael had strong, realistic features, lead lines, that complimented the design beautifully, and the effort, attention to detail and some 60 hours of hard work, by a highly dedicated and talented student, shone through. Well done Jutta, we know your window is going to give someone hours of pleasure, and we thoroughly enjoyed having you stay with us. We love excuses to have a party.
