One way to easily dress up a stained glass panel is to incorporate bevels into the design. While frequently used as borders, individual bevels can also be employed as standalone elements in the overall design of a window or panel.

A bevel, as defined at Glass Patterns Quarterly, is:

“cold glass (usually clear, thick plate) with edges that have been ground and polished to an angle other than 90 degrees. Transmitted light is refracted and a prism-like effect results. Bevels are available in a variety of sizes, shapes and geometric configurations (called ‘clusters’) for incorporation into leaded glass work.”

There was a time when I was downsizing from my three-bedroom home (with garage studio), and moving into a one-bedroom apartment (no garage). I couldn’t see any way that I could find room for a stained glass work area. So I started selling/giving away/using up many of my supplies.

I had a box of triangle-shaped clear bevels that I had purchased with no particular project in mind. I probably got them in some kind of deal, like the “spend just $100 more and get free shipping on your order” offers. Who can pass those up, right?

I decided to make a window based simply around triangle bevels. This is what I came up with:

I’m back in a three-bedroom home (two bedrooms and one studio, actually), and glass supplies seem to be slowly accumulating again. I now have a box of ¾ inch by 4 inch rectangular bevels that I bought for no particular purpose (going-out-of-business sale… Hello!). They will no doubt start trickling into future designs.

In the meantime, I can always hang them in my windows and, just like Pollyanna, use them as prisms to create rainbows.

“Just as if anybody’d care when they were living all the time in a rainbow!”
~ Pollyanna, by Eleanor H. Porter

  B is for Bevel.