Oakbrook-Esser
Studio and Gallery
This fabulous studio and gallery is famous for
its stained glass, especially around the world, when churches,
cathedrals, castles or Hollywood mansions need repairs done to
their famous and beautiful stained glass windows. Like an
example of the angel that was immersed in four inches of water,
that had been a nine foot angel, and now lay in pieces, with
brown feathered wings, cream colored gown and pastel flowers
that encircled her head for many decades, and is now being
gently, lovingly pried apart in a big trough by artisans at the
Oakbrook Esser Studios in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. The angel was
made in the Tiffany Studios in New York in 1892 and needed
cleaning, replacement pieces or some other matter that would
need the best artisans in the nation to remedy her needs. Once
finished, the angel wouldn't fly away, but she would go back
into the center of the 13 foot diameter rose window that she had
centered for more than a century in Oshkosh and then reinstalled
in the Trinity Episcopal Church. This is what Paul Phelps and
his artisans do day in and day out, restoring the beautiful
Tiffany windows, or any stained glass windows in the world. The
rainbow is composed of the colors; red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, indigo and violet, but this studio orders its glass from
their main supplier, Lamberts in Germany, using a palette of
5000 colors. Whenever someone walks into the gallery that
occupies the front of their studio, it is a moment of indecision
since there is a kaleidoscope of colors, shapes and other visual
delights, imagining going to places where stained glass windows
had been used to teach, mourn a bit about the mass production
that has overtaken our world and environment, and then look into
the future. The studio has been honored for the past quarter of
a century as being the only licensed vendor by the Frank Lloyd
Wright Foundation to restore and replace the master architect's
windows. The idea really begin with Olgivanna, Wright's widow,
who decided that in order to help fund her husband's legacy and
share his masterpieces with the people, everything would have to
be done in a particular way and with the approval of the
foundation. Originally, in the 1980s, there had been four
companies picked; with Tiffany's doing the silver work,
Schumaker did the fabrics, rugs and wallpaper, with Cassina of
Italy doing the furniture and Oakbrook Esser doing the glass
work. Today, only Schumaker and Oakbrook are still doing the
work.
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