Pane value

ANTIQUARY

People who buy old homes, or their doors and windows, and sometimes even furniture, do the greatest disservice when they replace ageing, old or broken panes of glass with modern float glass.

They might as well change the wood too, and dispense with the entire sense of antiquity by buying new.

It is not just the pristine value of an antique that is thus ruined, but also the sense of an art that might have been at its zenith when glass was handblown for use in windows.

Handblown glass is considered a creative form to this day, and to therefore treat it disparagingly is hardly worthy of the serious collector.

This tardiness continues, however, because there is no visible benefit to be seen in collecting glass that may be less than clear and probably suffered from distortions in the making.

True, there is value attached should you come by panels of painted or stained glass, usually from old churches, but since this is an unlikely occurrence, this column is addressing those bits of glass used in windows by itself "" often clear and sometimes painted in jewel-like, single tones and used in palaces, mansions and even temples to create an overall mosaic-like effect that must have been pleasing to the eye in the hot summers of the country.

Till the 17th century, window glass was blown. When rotated on a pontill, it appeared as a wavy sheet from which the bulls eye at the centre was cut out and resealed with a blob of glass, before being cut into the required shape.

In the other, the ends of the bubble were cut off, and the cylinder thus formed was slit and flattened in an oven, creating clear glass.

Perfected in Europe, both styles became available in India, and the Mughals were among the early users of coloured glass for cooling their palaces.

Later, they were considered gauche when the merchant class found them appealing, and their price made them affordable to the hoi polloi.

The colouring of glass was in many senses an Italian invention, and remained a technique they popularised with dyes and minerals, leading to the development of stained glass.

The English church quickly adopted it and brought it to India about the time the East India Company was making its forays into the world of commerce and politics.

Thereafter, it remained one of the highlights, especially given that the Hindus crafted idols of their gods of great beauty with whom the missionaries had to contend for attention.

Mezzotint picture glass engravings became popular in the 19th century, around the same time as naive art featuring saints, and both were a rage in colonial India.

Most has since been lost or taken away, and it is unlikely that religious buildings facing demolition will offer any suggestion of stained glass art in the open market. However, chances of pane glass being given away enjoys a greater possibility for the collector.

But of what possible use could such glass be if it is not put to use? There is definitely no aesthetic pleasure to be derived from stacking glass panes in a basement.

In construction, such panes may be used in specially created windows, though it is difficult to imagine it in real terms: glass, after all, is prone to damage, and replacements would look (and feel) different from old glass.

Should the panes come complete with windows that can be adapted to modern homes, there is still a chance of using them in a facade, but this is too is a somewhat remote possibility, unless an old mansion is being pulled down (in which case you need to get there before the knocking down begins to save the glass from surviving as mere shards).

What a few collectors who are passionate about anything old have managed is to use panes as dividing panels in interior sections of their homes.

It allows a mellow light to pass through while glass impurities and distortions (and where possible glass eyes) far from detracting from value, become desireable components. Unless, of course, it's bevelled or etched "" which restricts their use even further.

The use of imperfect old glass, whether plain or coloured, could open up an entire market of cheap Indian pane glass being passed off as antique collectibles. And you'd need to be passionately involved to root out the wheat from the chaff.