Stained Glass

One thing that has always captured my interest and amazement is stained glass. I was somewhat taken back when I discovered my sister was creating her own works of stained glass. I thought it was a difficult and time consuming, let alone, um, dangerous, hobby. (Cut fingers, cut arms, missing fingers...grin)

When I went through the Draper Temple Open House, I was moved by the stained glass in the doors and windows. In looking up the information on the work, I came across this blurb:
"All of the art-glass windows created by Utah artist Tom Holdman for the Draper Utah Temple miraculously survived a fire that left only a portion of one window damaged, even though the art studio itself was so badly burned, it was condemned."
That tells me the Lord looks after the works of His house. I thought it would be nice to explore the other temples and some of the stained glass that we are given in them.

The Redlands Temple has some unique glass work around the edges of the windows. I tried to get a close up look at them, but this is as good as I could get. The contractor who had been in charge of the building of this temple (and a few others) used to live in our ward. When we helped them clean up (the youth of our ward), they offered to let us have some of the leftover glass pieces that made up this unusual design. I was able to have two (I had two sons helping) and gave one to my sister for her glass making. The other I'm trying to frame.

Here is a photo of the young man who designed the windows for the Rexburg, Idaho Temple at work. Amazingly enough, he didn't even know his designs had been accepted for the windows until he was already on his mission. He was able to work on them when he came home. His name is Josh Lewis. Below is the completed example of his windows.

(All photos of the Rexburg, Idaho Temple are from this website)
Last, but certainly not least, is the Palmyra Temple. The windows there were made unique by following the foliage from the surrounding countryside. They were designed to match the Aspen trees that made up a great deal of the forestry, and I think they're gorgeous.

I would have added more if I could locate good photos of them, but that's hard to come by unless you have access to the open house brochures...grin.
So, hopefully, that's enough to wet your taste buds and make you want to see all of them in person. Thinking about the idea that there are over 140 temples around the world, the idea that you could visit each one of them is remote. (though there was a time you could have done so...)
I hope you take the time to visit the ones closest to you and enjoy the spirit and beauty that you'll find there.

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