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Chinese Culture Center Donation
Entry Door and Window
Living Room Cabinets
AIA Auction Panel
Entry Door
Bathroom Window
Kitchen cabinets 1
Kitchen cabinets 2

Chinese Culture Center Donation

Each year the Chinese Culture Center (whom I work for as a Chinatown Heritage Walk Docent) hosts an benefit dinner and silent auction. I made a small panel for the auction. My inspiration was a traditional Chinese painting that hangs in my mother's home. I selected a flower and a bird and rearranged them to fit my small panel. Shown at the right is the original painting and my design and the final result are below.

Original painting

Design:
Completed panel:

Value: $450-$550
Size: 14" x 14"

Entry Door and Window

We replaced our old boring front door with one based on a tree of life quilt pattern by Susan Boss. In 2008, I started working on transforming it to glass and got permission from Ms. Boss to use an adaptation of her design for my entry. We felt we needed to coordinate the door with a huge obscured glass window also in the entry. This floor-to-ceiling window overlooks our neighbor's back door, which we couldn't see due to the obscured glass. (see below for before and after on the window.) I simplified Ms. Boss' design to make it appropriate for glass and changed the horizontal orientation of her color changes to diagonal to improve vertical strength of the panel, especially since the window is more than 6 feet tall.

My original intent was for both windows to use colors, but I later decided that the door should be more generically appealing, so I switched to several textures of clear glass to replace the colored panes. I did use the same glass as an inner frame in both panels and replicated how the inner frame dropped on 'legs' to the bottom of each piece. I also was able to find bevels to be the leaves on the door, which gave it some additional 'bling'.

While I had designed these panels as came projects, both ended up as foil instead, which is lighter, though not normally considered weatherproof. However, since California building code requires door glass to be tempered, we added a plain tempered panel on the outside and installed the stained glass on the inside. This meant that weatherproofing was not a concern and the lighter result with foil would be an advantage. I was also keen on creating an arch within the companion window, like I had for the door, but concluded that it didn't work well.

  

Left: design overlaid on photo of the entry hall. Right: the finished panel before installation. One thing that is difficult to reproduce with the overlay technique is the transparency of the glass, especially when the base photo is not transparent (the door on the left is solid wood).

   
Left: Original window; Right: Clear replacement window Just removing the obscured glass increased the visual depth of the hallway (and gave us a nice view of the neighbor's cat on his cat door perch!).

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Completed door panel (inside/outside)

 
 Installed window


Completed panel from back with rebar to support its height. Comparing the two photos above, you can see how the color washes out in the light.

Value:
Door              Window
$1800             $3000
Size:
26" x 35"           28" x 75"



Above: Design inspiration.

Living Room Cabinets

The clients for whom I created the trumpet flower requested a set of four cabinet panels for bookcases that have been installed on either side of their living room fireplace. The plan was to create a pair of panels that flow together and reverse the design and change the flower colors for the other side of the room. The final designs are shown below.

Value: $1200 each
Size: 20" x 33" each

Right, Top Two: Panels installed in the cabinets, which are on either side of the fireplace, which is the lower right photo. The cabinet doors slide to provide access to books, but hide them the rest of the time
Right Lower: A wall, fireplace, and painting used for the color inspiration.
Below: Design with proposed glass. The orange set shows 3 possible glass options.

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AIA Auction Panel

Whenever the Angel Island Association has a live or silent auction, I have donated a panel to raise funds for this cooperating association that supports Angel Island State Park, where I also volunteer as a docent. My theme for each of the donated panels has been some aspect of Angel Island.

In 2008, the Baywood Artists, a talented group of plein air painters who selects a non-profit environmental group to support with their work, chose Angel Island as their project and painted wonderful scenes on and from the island. As a person relatively new to the art and design world, I thought I might use one of their works as an inspiration, and found several interesting paintings to choose from. Unfortunately, not all paintings translate well to glass, but one by Sherrill Miller had great potential and I got permission to recreate her painting in glass.

Value: $600
Size: 19.5" x 15.5"

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Original painting


Completed panel

Entry Door

A local cabinet maker liked our kitchen cabinets when he came to install our new stairway railing, and we created a design for his entry door. The flower is from a photo I took of a neighbor's iris and stylized for a more formal, antique look. The image  below is the design, and the one at right is the finished panel before installation in the door. It has survived a winter without problems and he and his wife like having their privacy back (visitors frequently peeked into the house thru the original clear window.)

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Value: $750 - $950
Size: 24" x 16"

Bathroom Window

A client found my website and invited me to discuss a small panel for a remodeled bathroom. We met at their house, discussed the siting and design preferences. They wanted to a trumpet flower and use colors in an area rug that are used throughout their home. I emailed them a design based on this discussion and made minor adjustments. We met to select glass at a local shop, and found a wonderful piece that included both the right colors of coral-orange and greens so that one sheet of glass was used for several different areas of the panel. Because the window is in the shower, I recommended installing it on the outside of their awning window.

Top Right: Closeup of installed window inside.

Bottom Right: from the outside.

Left: Positioned in the room.

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Value: $475
Size: 12.5" x 18.5"

Kitchen Cabinets 1

A client replaced their kitchen cabinets and added a peninsula with a cabinet and appliance garage. The cabinets are white, and the counter and backsplash are mid-tone neutral taupe tile. They did not want the interior of the cabinet to be visible and didn't intend to back light. They initially had wanted the panels to be only neutral colors (Left pattern below). After looking at a full-sized printout of the first design, they went back to the drawing board. We intended to add only a bit of color, but got more bold (Center pattern below). They are very pleased with the results (Right side photo below). They also like how the panels look with some light coming through them, and may change their minds about backlighting. Glass was chosen for its appearance in reflected light, but a bit of backlighting would emphasize some of the glass choices.

       

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Above: Panel in progress

Left: Original design, colors added, end results.

Value: $800 for the pair
Size: 8" x 32" each

Kitchen Cabinets 2

When we replaced our kitchen, I planned to make stained glass inserts for 2 cabinets (3 doors) but was convinced by the kitchen designer that 2 more cabinets (4 more doors) with glass would be better. While doing seven of the same design seemed a bit overwhelming, it went much faster than anticipated. Given the nature of the design, I did it in lead came instead of my usual foil process. I found this to be a good exercise to improve my skills with these materials, as each panel was a bit quicker and better than its predecessor. The design and first finished panel are below. The largest pair is shown at the right.

      

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Approximate sizes: 11" x 35, 15.5" x 35, 12" x 35", 12.4" x 36

Value for all 7: $2800-$3500

 
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Sunrise Art Glass
415-389-8916
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Copyright © 2009 Lynn Eichinger
Last modified: 06/21/09