On the site of Glazenier Alex Luigjes is his curriculum vitae. It is clear:
1964-1969 Study ‘Monumental and architectural design’ at the Academy of Visual Arts in Utrecht
1969-1974 working as a glazier in the studio of Alex Luigjes Sr.
1974-1979 Partnership with Alex Luigjes Sr.
From 1979 continuation without Alex Luigjes Sr.
But Alex Luigjes (77), he says in his studio in Amersfoort, did not want to become a glazier at all. That was already his father, his studio was on the ground floor of the house. “If you got home from school, you could draw or play with glass: the creativity was before picking up.”
He liked it, but still: “I always felt busy: that I had to follow in his footsteps. And at the academy I started to resist it. I discovered other things: sculpture, textile design. And I wanted to get through. But then the exam year came and you had to carry out assignments. That was a lot of work that you had to do at home. Materials.
They went to work together: his father restored stained glass windows, he did the administration and made free work: spatial objects, sometimes for private individuals, often for companies. “The churches went to my father. I was still with the idea: I want to choose my own direction.”
After ten years his father retired. And there was another change: “Exactly at that time a large stream of restorations started, all ecclesiastical assignments. In the late 1970s and early eighties that was.”
It was the stained glass windows of Catholic churches from the second half of the nineteenth century, which were due for replacement. Those churches were built after ‘freedom of association and meeting’ was included in the 1848 constitution and, in 1853, the dioceses had been restored. Almost all of the new churches were neo-gothic, with biblical stories in stained glass stories in pointed arch windows.
“From such churches, hundreds have been built. And after one hundred, one hundred and twenty years late in the windows the kit between the glass and the lead: it is then dried out. Then it leaks, rust is created in the steel construction of the window, and therefore the glass can break down. So suddenly a lot of work came to us. I was the smallest, I employed three people.
Is restoration also nice to do?
“Yes. Yes. Because you dive in a different time, that of the glass painters of the nineteenth century. When you restore, you are at the service of the artist designed the glass-you replace what he has made. You have to read about it, some painters are known, others less. That: you see the same windows in more churches.
“It is a very difficult technique, huh. If you have paper and you paint, then that paper sucks up that paint. But glass is smooth – and you still have to put paint on it. It is also special paints, chemically composed with binders and liquid drugs. The secret of fire painting is: glass has no melting point but a week point, and if you are never the weak. degrees – the glass paint together with the surface of the glass, paint and glass merge with each other if the composition of the paint is good, and you have followed the entire protocol, then glass paint lasts. ”
And your own designs?
“Restoring deserved well, so I was able to combine it with other assignments: windows for private individuals and companies, new windows in churches. And that was nice, because restoration is nice work, but it is not very creative. You are mainly concerned with the craft.”
How is that going, designing new windows for a church? Do you have the free hand then?
“No, not that. A ecclesiastical client has a story that he wants to get rid of in a window. So you are in the armor of that assignment. And I work abstractly, so that is quite difficult: I have to shape that story. And there are more things to keep in mind. You sit with the framework of the window: is that a classic or southern window. And within all those frameworks you have to design. ”
And when they say: do the cross -decrease?
“I will have to find that in abstraction, so certain colors and shapes. Wait, I will show you an example.”
He takes his laptop and opens the link to his site. You see photos of two pointed arch windows next to each other, on the left with a yellow triangle of stained glass, on the right with a red, partly divided triangle. They are turned away from each other: the yellow triangle has the long side on the right, the red has the long side left. Both triangles seem to float: the glass is transparent all around. Alex Luigjes designed the windows in 1998 for the Sint-Catharinakerk in Doetinchem.
“The windows in that church were in need of restoration, but they also wanted to leave something from the twentieth century.” Spirit “and” fire, “I got the assignment – and that is what you see in the windows. The fire was the easiest, fire is red and flaming. The spirit was more difficult: what time you see. Ultimately it is an issue of interpretation. From a building, I find a window that you look at, the function must be kept through it.
At the moment he is working on “perhaps the project of my life, at least a project that just lingers me, my unfinished thing.”
These are a number of large, stained glass windows that have been in storage with him for more than forty years.
He remembers exactly how it started. “I was called that day, whether I could visit a church that was renovated. It was going to be an apartment complex. And there were stained glass windows in which they wondered: are they worth it.”
We must ensure that classic restoration does not disappear
He drove there in the car, he did not know the church. ‘The Nicolaas Pieck’ in Gorinchem is named after one of the ‘martyrs of Gorcum’: Roman Catholic clergymen who worked in Gorinchem when the Geuzen took that in 1572. They were not willing to give up their faith, were tortured and suspended. In 1867 they were declared holy by Pope Pius IX.
In the church they all turned out to have their own window. “I saw those windows: a little impressive – and beautiful in technology, also. So I said: those windows have to get out, as soon as possible. The contractor already had drill piles in the church, here and there were windows. In a week, two weeks we took ten windows out of it. But the municipality did not know what to do with it, so I said they are prior.”
They were four and a half, five meters high, composed of panels of sixty by sixty centimeters. “You code them, you take photos and you remove the panels from the window. Then you save the panels.” In the course of time people sometimes came by who said they wanted something with it, but that never happened. “And after thirty years I still had them.”
Until – after a few stuck, local initiatives – the ‘MARTELAREN GEDENCH PLACE OF GORCUM Foundation“was founded. Now four windows are being restored, after which they will be outdoors as a artwork.
Alex Luigjes has the panels in his studio. The strange thing is, he says: “Those martyrs are known all over the world, but not to us. And what I like: the windows were designed by the then pastor. Pastoors often had a profession: Father-painter, pater carpenter. And this was a pater-glazier.”
We look at a few panels, you see the audience looking at the execution, someone is cheerful and drinks beer, another has put their hands in front of the eyes. Sometimes a small piece of glass is broken, another time a complete face is missing. What does he do then? „Zo’n hoofd moet ik opnieuw schilderen – dat mag ik dan zelf ontwerpen, maar wel in dezelfde stijl natuurlijk. Er zijn meer van die hoofden, dus die bestudeer ik: wat zijn dat voor karakters. De techniek van de ontwerper was: zachtjes tamponneren, decoratief en nonchalant schilderen. Dus zo moet je dat dan ook een beetje doen. En het hoeft niet zo te worden als het was hè, dat kan ook niet. Maar als je het raam straks tegen het licht ziet, moet je mijn werk niet terug Being able to find it in the whole. ”
So it is not only serviceability, but also own input?
“Yes, that’s right. If a colleague did it, the window would turn out differently. But also his interpretation would be absorbed in the whole.”
Does he have a special feeling about this project? “I know most of the churches, have worked for all possible societies. But I am not religious from home. So it is not such a feeling. But I think this is a very special story, it is about life in freedom, respect and tolerance.”
And, he also thinks: “This is about a craft that is disappearing. My generation of glaziers is just stopping. Many are my age, a little older, a little younger. And it’s a very technical profession, isn’t it, you don’t just get it in the fingers. A painter has painted, a brush and a cloth and then you have all the glazes, you are with your oven, you are with you, you are in the glosame, you are getting into your oven, you are getting into your oven, you are in a glazes, you are in the glosame. Knowing expansion and shrinking coefficients, because otherwise you are a professional who performs something for others, so who is less concerned with creativity, and such a kind of craftsman no longer want to be young people- then the classic fire painting disappears. ”