... or a "stain-glassed" window? I've always used the term in the title, but I ran across the alternative in a book today.
I'm comfortable with a window being called "glassed," but since the material depicted is (as far as I know) "stained glass" rather than "stain glass," I would think the logical term would be "stained glass."
Google does yield thousands of hits for "stain-glassed," but I would think it must be a miscontrual - unless some reader knows differently.
First, if you really need to specify that a window has glass in it, the proper term would be "glazed," not "glassed."
ReplyDeleteSecond, "stain-glassed window" makes about as much sense as "ice-tead beverage" or "mix-fruited cup" or "whip-creamed topping." In my opinion as a professional editor, it's an abomination.
@Swift Loris - I agree with you re the improperness of "stain-glassed," but it's not absolutely improper to speak of a window being "glassed." Random House presents as the first definition of the verb form "glass = to fit with panes of glass."
ReplyDeleteThe compact OED offers an 1886 definition "glassing the windows is to put the panes into their frames," and says that "glaze" is an "equivalent older formation."
James Agee used the term "glassed window" in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. If you search Google Books for "glassed window" you can find hundreds more examples from reputable sources.
But I do agree that "glazed" would be more conventional and understandable.
Next step is to decide if the proper term for the lead inserts in stained glass is "caning" or "caming"... The 'net seems to go both ways.
ReplyDeleteStained Glass, every time.
ReplyDeleteThere is no such thing as "stain-glass"
The phrase "stain-glassed" is one I'd never previously heard. If there was such a thing as "stain-glass" then perhaps to describe a window as "stain-glassed" might be acceptable. In this time and age we refer to glazing rather than glassing. The fact that Agee uses 'glassed' in his book shows that the english language is a hugely variant-tolerating environment, (as is to be shown by the fact that the Oxford English Dictionary in its full form runs to 28 volumes.
Using my love of reading the OED, I can scatter words around a scrabble board, secure in the knowledge that they will be challenged, because nobody in the real world ever uses them, but despite that, they exist).
Canes and cames in glasswork are not the same thing. Cames are the lead sections that hold the individual pieces of glass together to form a panel, they're usually, but not exclusively, 'H'shaped in cross section.
Canes are rods of coloured glass, which can be cut and melted or fused to colour flat pieces of glass.
Cames is the term you will find used by the restorers of mediaeval cathedral windows, cames comes from the latin for reed, calamus.
Disclaimer: I once had a friend whose main working activity was restoring ancient stained glass.
soubriquet, I've read that modern stained-glass artists can't seem to reproduce the colors used in medieval times--that they're much deeper and richer, and that the medieval artists must have had special formulas that haven't been preserved. I've even read suggestions that the secrets of alchemy may have been involved. Has your friend ever talked about this, or is it just romantic nonsense?
ReplyDeleteThere are two methods for creating stained glass windows. One is when pieces of colored glass are glazed together using lead cane or copper. The other method is what appeared to be used in the window that was pictured. That is when a design is painted on a glass panel, then the glass is fired fusing the color into the glass panel.
ReplyDeleteThe paints used in the second method are referred to as stains. It might be that someone was trying to differentiate between the two methods. The truth is both methods are commonly referred to as "stained glass".
I don't know what the right answer is, but several people seem to interchange the words "cane"/"caning"/"came" and "caming" when they describe the lead-separated pieces of glass in a window (not necessarily stained). I've seen it both ways, and if Soubriquet is correct, the fact that both words actually mean something in glass work, makes it easier for laymen to confuse the two.
ReplyDeleteAt least "caming" doesn't come up in any other context in English, while the other 3 variations can apply to things that have nothing to do with glass.
Ok, I take that back. There seems to be some usage on the web, where "caming" is the gerund of "to cam" meaning to use a web camera...
In reply to Swift Loris, no, I don't recall any discussion of lost pigmentation, though we did discuss how at different ages the glass itself differed, which affects the behaviour of the metal salts used for colouring. In an earlier time I made my living as a potter, and we dabble in similarly abstruse layers of high temperature chemistry. The original meeting came at an event in a mediaeval hall, the Merchant Adventurers hall in York. She was demonstrating rebuilding of a small window, and was fascinated by the similarity in colour of one of my glazes to a piece of her glass, the glaze was coloured with copper carbonate, and used a barium carbonate flux, which gives a particularly vibrant range of blues and turquoises.
ReplyDeleteI think people interchange caning and caming simply because caming has so specific a meaning that when people hear it, they think they've misheard it, and substitute caning in its place.
As for caming being a gerund od a verb, to cam... surely that would be camming? just as to can brings us canning, to bat, batting, and so forth.
Whoever wrote the web definition is likely to be of the web/text generation who are mostly oblivious to spelling and grammar, but would howl with laughter if I attemptedlospeak.
Lolspeak, I meant... there's a reminder to me to review before hitting the button. I just hate these tiny comment boxes. but that's because I'm unable to be succinct.
ReplyDelete