Have you ever seen a picture made from colored glass? This type of art is called stained glass. Stained glass is a form of painting that began over 1,000 years ago. It is still essentially made the same way today. The process of making a stained glass began with an artist creating a drawing. It could show anything—a church might ask for a religious scene, or a person who liked books might want a picture of someone reading. Stained glass was usually used to make windows, so that the light would shine through the painting.

Next, a painter carefully copied the drawing onto pieces of colored glass using vitreous paint, which is paint that contains tiny glass particles mixed in a liquid. He then baked the painted glass in a very hot oven to make the paint permanent. Then, he joined the glass pieces with strips of lead to make a single window. It took great skill to paint a scene on many pieces of glass and then put them together like a jigsaw puzzle.

You need to see stained glass windows in person to experience their magic. Look for buildings in your neighborhood that may have them. Think about how the weather and the time of day affect the appearance of the images on the glass.