About
I came up in a stained-glass studio, apprenticed for six years in the cutting room and then two more at the lead bench, before realizing the came we were fighting with — soft where we needed stiffness, stiff where we needed draw — was a fixable problem if someone was willing to mill it themselves.
The shop is a converted dairy barn on a quiet road. There are four rooms: the foundry, the mill, the bench, and the crate room. The dog stays in the office.
I work alone, and I mean to keep it that way. The scale of the work matches the scale of the craft it supports — small studios, careful conservators, restorations that take years and deserve stock drawn with the same patience.
If the original panel was leaded in an odd profile at an odd width, that's the stock I'll mill. The catalog is a starting point, not a wall.
Drawing came slowly is how you get came that lies flat, solders cleanly, and doesn't fail in twenty years. I don't romanticize it. It's simply how the metal behaves.
Every batch has a record. Alloy source, die number, mill date, stick count. If a panel needs repair in 2070, someone should be able to find what went into it.
New work comes in through studios I've worked with before, or through their referrals. It keeps the calendar sane and the conversations specific.