– With the precision of a surgeon, Sophia Lind gets lost in her work, which involves placing pieces of colored glass into what amounts to a giant artistic jigsaw puzzle.
“We do churches. We do residential front doors, side lights, transoms, skylights, cabinet panels,” said Jack Whitworth, who founded the business in 1952.After later stints in the corporate world, Whitworth decided to make it a career.“It progressed all the way to becoming an accredited member of the Stained Glass Association of America,” he said. “We design and fabricate new windows, as well as we take existing windows that may be well over 100 years old and we restore them.
Each panel of glass has to be separated from the others and from the fragile strips of lead that hold them all together.“We also soak it to get all the decades of grime and grit and paint,” Whitworth said.Once they have all the pieces ready and repaired, the staff has to fit it all together again with a frame.