You are about to discover a glass-building adventure that could very well change the way you approach your craft. Plating (sometimes known as layering) departs radically from typical leaded glass windows for the following reasons:

First, the compositions look as much like paintings as they do glass windows. Since they can be as pictorial as paintings, they enable you to advance from single-layer geometrically designed windows that usually fail to convey reality or depth. After you see the results of your first plated project, you may never again be content to work on ordinary panels.

Plating can be used to construct an entire window, or used on a very limited spot basis to enhance a design. For example, a floral motif might suddenly burst to life by the simple addition of shadows and texture at several critical points in the composition. That flexibility means you do not necessarily have to change your basic approach to the craft.

Second, you will be led into the advanced design, engineering, and glass selections integral to the art of plating. Invented by an unknown glass artist of the late 19th century, then perfected by Louis Comfort Tiffany later in the 1900s, the body of knowledge on plating has never been documented before now.

The almost limitless variety of glasses now available will offer you new possibilities. By researching various glass combinations, the potential for innovation is always at your fingertips.

Plating is not limited to windows. If you do floral lamps, plating will give your foliage a full measure of depth and realism. Petals can cast shadows on leaves, leaves on stems. Blooms can be made to look as if they are deeper in the foliage by putting some of them behind wispy glass. Splashes of yellow or red paint in the center of flowers heighten realism. Additionally, the use of layers in lamps introduce still other colors to closely emulate the look of variegated flowers.

The material in this book takes you from the background of plating, to design concepts that work particularly well for plating projects, to the construction details of a pane that may include up to five layers of superimposed glass................