Karolina Wawok’s stained glass studio
The art of stained glass is a way for Karolina to combine two of her loves – art and history. Starting her career making large installations for churches and the like, the pieces she makes today are on a much smaller scale, but still glowing in colour.
Photography: Lisia Nora Photography
Art and culture has always surrounded Karolina. Originally from Bielsko-Biała – a city in the south of Poland – she moved to Kraków to study art history. She also studied in Italy, and completed her internship in Portugal, but decided to finally settle in a small town in Kraków. Day-to-day, she works at the local museum and spends her afternoon creating.
“I have attended many art workshops and classes since I was a kid. Now I have my own stained glass studio, but sometimes I also paint oil paintings – mainly portraits. When I have free time, I love to travel, learn foreign languages, bake cakes, take care of my plants, and also spend time with my family and friends,” says Karolina.
Her journey with stained glass started after graduating, when she was hired in a stained glass workshop where the artist could combine her knowledge of art history and languages with her manual skills.
“I started from the very beginning, trained by a colleague. I remember how many times I cut myself with glass back then… We were creating many stained glass windows for churches and other institutions and got involved in almost every step of making them, so it was very good training.”
“It is fascinating that this type of craft was invented so many years ago, and it hasn’t changed that much since the Middle Ages.”
The style that Karolina works mostly in is the Tiffany technique. Invented by Louis Comfort Tiffany, the technique – which is also known as Favrile, meaning ‘handcrafted’ – can be identified by the colouring being embedded into the glass.
“The whole process is quite complicated, but is also quite fascinating. I always start with a project and I prefer to do it by hand. Then I transfer it to the transparent paper to obtain a kind of ‘map’. This map has to be transferred once again, but to the cardboard, in order to cut out the templates.”
Once Karolina has the template, the glass cutting can begin. The edges of each piece of glass are smoothed, and then framed with copper foil.
“To join all of the pieces together I have to solder them with tin. I clean the whole piece and if I would like to have black joints, I need to apply patina on them.”
When working in the traditional way, lead is used instead of copper foil and putty is applied to the gaps.
Scattered across her studio are often works of flora and fauna, with designs being influenced by what Karolina sees around her.
“I really like creating pieces inspired by nature, especially birds and flowers. Gaudi used to say that he has to create his works separately
by hand because they have to be different, like in nature. You won’t find, for example, two exactly the same leaves. And that’s fascinating. I also love different patterns. “I recently bought myself a book of ornaments, and so many new ideas came to my mind!”
What Karolina loves most about creating stained glass artworks, is the history involved in the craft.
“It is fascinating that this type of craft was invented so many years ago and it hasn’t changed that much since the Middle Ages. Of course we now have new tools that allow us to do more detailed and complicated projects, but the main rules are the same. Stained glass windows can survive ages! The oldest existing in the world are almost 1,000 years old.
“I also like that it is like a combination of fine arts and craft. If you want, you can create your piece to look like an abstract painting, but on the other hand you have to keep in mind all of the technical rules and issues. I love that glass can completely change the interior. When the sun comes through it we can get almost magical effects, the game of shadows and colours.
“And I think that the most important advantage is that by using glass, we can present anything that we want and where we want. Stained glasses are not made to be presented just in churches. We can hang them in our modern apartments on the windows, on the walls, and we can wear it as jewellery. It gives us a lot of possibilities.”
@pracownia_szklanka
Krakow, Poland
