(no audio) (bright ethereal music) (bright ethereal music continues) (bright ethereal music continues) (bright ethereal music continues) - [Narrator] In 1970, the contract to create a stained glass window for this space in Washington National Cathedral was awarded to artist Rowan LeCompte.

By January of 1976 with only three months until its dedication ceremony, the window was behind schedule and there were serious doubts about its artistic merits.

- [Rowan] The dean was saying, "Hopelessly too dark.

It's gonna have to come out as soon as we get it all in.

Oh, we don't want that window.

No, we don't want that window.

It's terrible."

- [Narrator] To understand Rowan's daring approach to this commission, one needs to go back to the window's inception more than a hundred years ago.

In 1893, Congress granted the cathedral's charter, and under the administration of Bishop Henry Satterlee, architects George Bodley and Henry Vaughn created the original Gothic design.

The iconic west rose window we know today almost never happened.

For in the original design, the western facade had a much smaller rose window.

It was only a twist of fate and a new architect that intervened.

- First stone was laid in 1907.

Bodley died soon thereafter.

Vaughn died in 1917, and then Philip Frohman was hired as the cathedral architect in 1921 and he sought to completion the design of the cathedral.

- [Narrator] As the grandson of an architect, Philip Hubert Frohman was a child prodigy who designed his first house at 14.

He was the youngest person to ever pass the California state architectural examination and had early designs on Washington Cathedral.

- And when Frohman had visited the cathedral himself in 1914, in the guest book, in his own little coding, wrote, "I will be the architect of the Cathedral."

- [Narrator] Once Frohman did become the cathedral architect his first priority was to redesign the western facade.

He felt that the west rose window should be enlarged to admit more light and to create a more dramatic focal point for visitors to the building.

In 1918, he submitted this new design, which was very much in keeping with Gothic architectural tradition.

By the late 1920s, the north transept was taking shape and the cathedral had to get serious about its windows, and Frohman wrote about why they chose Lawrence B. Saint as their first major stained-glass artist.

- [Philip] We selected Mr.

Lawrence Saint to design and make the first stained-glass windows for the superstructure of the Washington Cathedral with the hope that his unusual knowledge of medieval glass might enable him to produce ideal windows, and thus, set the pace for others.

(bright ethereal music continues) - [Narrator] The north rose was installed in the early 1930s.

One of the biggest impacts this window had on the cathedral was that it inspired a young boy from Baltimore.

In 1940, 14-year-old Rowan LeCompte was treated to a trip to Washington Cathedral by a visiting aunt.

- It was the 1st of July and the light and sunshine were just tremendous.

And when we walked up the temporary steps, we reached a door, we pulled it open and there was absolute darkness beyond.

That was in our eyes because when we stepped through the door, they closed behind us.

We were really in an enchanted place and there was no white light glare.

There was only a perfectly charming blue rose window opposite, hanging in the air up there with other windows nearby and they were all in lovely color, and I'd never seen color in architecture like this.

I'd never seen architecture like this.

It was so huge and so beautiful that I was simply thunderstruck.

It was like a meeting with God.

(chuckles) Well, it was.

It was.

I was overwhelmed by the beauty, by the mysteriousness.

I was just enthralled.

I was petrified with joy.

I'd gone to the library and read all the books they had on stained-glass, and I attempted my first stained-glass panel and had it ready for my parents for Christmas.

I made eventually some 40 panels of various sizes.

I was much too excited about this material to have any idea of stopping, and by the time I was 15, March of '41, I knew without a doubt what I wanted to do the rest of my life.

- [Narrator] When Rowan was visiting Washington Cathedral in the early '40s, there was no west rose window, there was not even a nave, but Rowan must have seen some drawings and he had some ambitions.

In an unpublished article for the Baltimore Sun, columnist Gary Johnson Pool writes, "He has two great ambitions.

One is to work with Connick at Boston, the other is to be able to do the western rose window and lancets at the Washington Cathedral."

Rowan said, "The building will not be finished for 30 years and by that time I hope to be good enough to have a chance to bid on the job."

While Rowan was inspired, cathedral architect Philip Frohman was less than enthused with Saint's work.

- [Philip] Although Mr.

Saint did produce windows that were well above average and his rose window in the north transept is finer than the western rose in the cathedral of St.

John the Divine, New York.

Yet, the average of his work was quite disappointing to me.

- [Narrator] Part of the reason for this disappointment surely must have stemmed from Saint's attempt to recreate medieval glass.

- Saint had the people who worked for him.

He had to make little wiggly lines all around the edge of any piece in the window that wasn't decorated like this so that that would soften the effect.

Well, I would think from five feet away, you can't see this.

It's a piece of ridiculous mindless superstition, and then he gets them to film it all over on the inside, and then by golly, to spatter it all over on the outside because medieval windows, lots of them, had little tiny pits in the glass.

- [Philip] It seemed to be an artificial way of giving to a window, the effect that dirt and years of erosion have given to many medieval windows.

I feel that the best method of making a modern window would be to make and select glass of the exact colors desired in the window, and if the intensity of color were too great in any piece of glass, it should not be smudged over, but merely have the area of colored light reduced by crosshatching or a design of lines painted on the glass.

- [Narrator] Perhaps it was destiny, but it was not long before Philip Frohman met someone who embraced his theories on stained glass, the young boy from Baltimore.

- When I was 16, I was by glorious chance introduced to the architect of the cathedral.

He said he wanted stained-glass windows in his buildings to have richness and sparkle, and those sounded like wonderful ideals to me.

There are people that would be offended by that, by those demands because they'd say, oh no, it should be, it should be mute, it should be quiet, it should be restful, which is why people fall asleep in church.

- [Philip] A few conferences with Mr.

LeCompte and one little window that he brought over to show me caused me to believe that he had the qualifications which might enable him to design and make the type of window I have desired for St.

Dunstan's Chapel.

- The idea of being able to do something for the cathedral was, for me, just totally overwhelming and I couldn't help starting little sketches.

(bright ethereal music continues) He was delighted when I put before him the full-sized pen and ink drawing, and he said, "Well, I like these very much, but we'll see what the building committee says and I will be back in hardly more than an hour."

When he came back, he said, "I'm delighted to be able to tell you that the building committee has unanimously approved your two drawings for the window in St.

Dunstan's Chapel."

And of course, again, everything went blurry (laughs) before me and really I had never experienced such extremes of joy as I did then, never.

- [Philip] When I saw this window early on the first morning after it had been installed, it seemed to me that it had celestial fire and gave a heavenly light.

Mr.

LeCompte has produced the first example of what I meant years ago when I spoke and wrote from time to time of my desire for windows that would've glass of a prismatic character with a combination of rich colors and sparkling silver in which the clarity and purity of color would not be dulled by filming with paint in which each piece of glass would be like a jewel or a precious stone, which would not be colored screens to the light but appear as radiant sources of a rainbow-like and celestial quality.

Like most men of real genius, he seems to have a diversity of talents and may excel in several arts.

If he lives, he may create the only great stained glass that has been made since the 13th or early 14th centuries.

It is my hope that our stained-glass artists who have been entrusted with the apse windows may be willing to be influenced by a lesson that might be learned from this little window and that their windows may be made truly glorious in effect.

- [Narrator] Installed in 1963, the second great eye of Washington Cathedral, the south rose was well received by the administration as explained by Canon Feller.

- [Canon] The symbolism suggests a church triumphant featuring a ruling majesty in its center multi-foil.

It was designed by Joseph C. Reynolds and jointly made by Reynolds and Wilbur Herbert Burnham.

It's composed of beautiful blues and a superb rainbow effect around the center medallion.

- [Narrator] While the window has its merits, the treatment of the glass was viewed by some as a lost opportunity.

- The south rose at the cathedral, it's been filmed all over with black paint and that has very often been stippled with a big furry dry brush so that it looks like a plate with an even sprinkling of pepper on it.

It's an antique look, and that is all wrong in my opinion because it's taking beautiful material and making it ugly.

- [Narrator] The cathedral administration was well aware of the danger that too much antique art would lock this great Gothic structure in the past.

By the mid 1960s, the nave was well under construction and the iconography of the west end of the cathedral was under much discussion.

In a letter to Dean Sayre, Canon Feller urged a shift away from traditional religious imagery.

- [Canon] In Lord Kenneth Clark's civilization series, he says in effect that Protestantism has never made a major contribution to the art world.

The west facade of Washington Cathedral may be our last chance.

This is a golden opportunity to forge a major statement in the art of imagery and symbolism.

(bright ethereal music continues) It is now my proposal that one of the greatest themes of church doctrine heretofore unexplored in any cathedral is that of the creation.

Our age is peppered with new discoveries of God's universe, both microcosm and macrocosm.

The depiction of our universe is also most timely with all the debates over ecology, environment, and man's destruction of the delicate balance of nature created by divine will.

The glorious genesis story was not written to record what was created, but to acknowledge that it was an act of God.

Creation is in itself a special concept.

It is endless, it is constant.

It's both seen and unseen.

There is an unseeable and unknowable reality about endless creation.

In conclusion, I would not deny the artist of the west rose window the subject of creation.

- [Narrator] When in 1941, Rowan LeCompte said he hoped to be good enough to get a chance to bid on the west rose.

He was very serious.

By 1946, he had done his first rose window for St.

Bartholomew's Church in Baltimore with his early partner Robert Lewis.

Between 1950 and 1970, Rowan and his first wife, Irene, produced over 100 windows in places ranging from Maine to Wyoming.

During this period, the couple produced 15 windows and five mosaics for Washington Cathedral.

After Irene's tragic death in 1970, Rowan kept working and had three other large commissions for the cathedral.

They were clearly happy with his work and he was clearly good enough.

(telephone rings) Rowan's phone rang on December 8th, 1970.

On the back of a check, Rowan recorded that Canon Feller called to inform him that the building committee had unanimously voted to commission him to do the west rose.

Rowan was elated in his response.

- [Rowan] Dear Dick, through you, may I express to all the members of the building committee my gratitude for the marvelous opportunity of the west rose.

I promise the cathedral my most patient effort and enthusiastic dedication toward realizing the richest and most beautiful rose I can imagine and evolve.

Yours sincerely, Rowan.

- [Narrator] One interesting stipulation in the contract was that before he began, Rowan was to visit the great cathedrals of Europe for inspiration, a task he wholeheartedly embraced.

- [Rowan] I learned more from French cathedrals than I could ever have learned from any school.

A number of windows from the 12th century still grace the interiors for which they were made.

Their sparkle and glow reveal the understanding of the effects of color and light and distance.

Battered by time and mischance, they're still wonderfully beautiful and moving.

- [Narrator] With a signed contract, it was time for Rowan to figure out how to interpret the creation theme in the space provided.

- I was offered the choice by the builder committee of whether to do figures or not.

Well there are two rose windows of same size, both of which had figures, full figures, and I defy anybody to tell me what anything is doing because the figures are small, so I thought that would not be the case if it were beautiful designs of all sorts woven together.

- (chuckles) I think the thing that struck me the most was that they allowed him to do it.

It was such a departure from tradition.

- Historically, stained-glass windows have been used to tell the story of the Bible, the story of the gospel, the story of Jesus, the Old Testament, you name it.

And having the windows be figurative is fabulous, but I don't think that is the entire story.

I think we can tell a lot of truth and lift up a lot of insights around scripture by using stained glass that is less figurative.

- [Narrator] While Rowan had designs on the west rose since he was 15, a series of notes beginning in 1968 revealed his thinking process.

- [Rowan] Dim golden spots, soft orange spots, shaded turquoise hanging between seer, dark indigo and magenta.

Let sparks in center represent a divine impulse.

Let great delicate white spidery form symbolize the outer universe of matter: galaxies, atoms, suns; let the petals suggest evolution in their progression from dark to light.

Finally, let the 10 roses represent 10 supreme human achievements: Buddha, Greece, China, Mozart, Einstein, et cetera.

Nucleus of sparks and indigo, then beaded whites, spidery lines making a suggestion of energy in a galactic-like form.

At the end of an enormously long distance, I'm inclined to think it should be predominantly blue.

Blue suggests great distance in space.

And if you could have at the end of this space a marvelous, mysterious floating jewel, why it could go on forever, which after all is what one wants.

- [Narrator] By June 1971, Rowan had a design that was ready to submit to the building committee.

It was reviewed and accepted and it was time to plan the execution of the window.

He knew he would need a partner in this and turned to master craftsman Dieter Goldkuhle, a meticulous man with a passion for glass and light.

- You have to imagine that as a youngster to have that offered to you, the opportunity to work on a rose window of that size and that magnitude and for a building of that stature, and that certainly was a dream I could have never imagined.

- [Narrator] Dieter's son Andrew suggests why Rowan put his trust in Dieter.

- The one thing he prided himself on was when he took a commission, he touched every piece of glass.

Every window that he made was his window and he sweated every detail.

You know, once he was under contract, it didn't matter what the contract was, the window was the most important aspect of it.

- He's over overwhelmingly masterful in his understanding of the medium and his love of it, but above all, just of the fact that he does it as if it were for God.

Indeed he said, "I feel my whole heart is in this, I'm doing it for the love of the material, the art, my soul," I think, he does it out of love.

- It became a love affair and it hasn't left me and it has to do with the magic of glass and the relationship it has with light, and that is a lifelong pursuit of mine.

- [Narrator] This love of light and its relationship with stained glass came to Rowan and Dieter in different ways, but it was nurtured in them by an English author who they both read and revered.

- There's a wonderful book about stained glass called, it was written in 1905 by a Londoner, an Englishman named Christopher Whall, W-H-A-L-L.

It's called "Stained- Glass Work."

And his whole insistence is on making it a personal cause on your part.

Don't do it for money.

You'll never have enough money.

- [Christopher] There is only one rule for fine work in art that you should put your whole strength, all the powers of mind and body into every touch.

There must be nothing out of harmony with the architecture, and therefore you must know something of architecture, not in order to imitate the past and try to get your own mistaken for it and reverence and joy of heart of the old builders so that your spirit may harmonize with theirs.

- [Narrator] One person Rowan seemed to be in harmony with was architect Philip Frohman, who was pleased that Rowan was chosen to do the west rose and hoped it would increase his chances of seeing the completion of the nave.

- [Philip] With the recent acceleration in the building program and the assurance of LeCompte making the rose window, it is quite possible that I may live to see it.

- [Narrator] Tragically, this was not to be as he was struck by an automobile while crossing the street near the cathedral and died in August of 1972.

Whether it was the death of Frohman or the echoes of Christopher Whall, Rowan was beginning to have second thoughts on his approved design for the west rose.

- [Rowan] Unfortunately, we already have two blue rose windows.

One can dream that if the building were still on the drawing board, if we could start from scratch, then the west rose could be blue.

The north rose, which never receives much sun, could be gold and the south rose, which receives very strong sun, could be dark red, velvety deep crimson.

- [Narrator] As often happens with artists, Rowan found the answer to this dilemma in a trip away from the studio.

- The essential experience that launched the window was in September-October.

Peggy and I went out to look at leaves, and the leaves were so beautiful.

That was a year where there had been enough rain and everything was just glorious, and it was those trees that put me onto this.

I just thought how beautiful they are.

Some in shadow and some in full sunshine and some mysterious and dim and others just like trumpets (leaves rustling) and trying to make a a design that said that, and it worked and worked and worked and worked and worked.

And this is, (chuckles) this is it.

(bright ethereal music) - [Narrator] Rowan's new design was submitted to the building committee in December of 1973.

More than two years after the first design, it was judged to be an improvement and accepted.

- It's really a collection of this unit of three large pieces.

They're separated by these smaller units.

- [Narrator] Filling these openings with an abstract design that had meaning is something Rowan had been thinking about for years.

- [Rowan] The next step is to do full sizes and Dieter took all the sizes from the stone, which was not, at that time, in existence.

We were making the window before the stone frame was built.

- And it was all a template work.

So there are something like 151 openings in that rose window and the tolerance was within the 16th of an inch that it had to fit, and that is rather tight for glass to sit in a limestone opening.

(bright music) - [Narrator] For Rowan, creating the full-size cartoons was a chance to let loose his creativity.

- There is a pleasure in exploring, visually, one of these openings because you find that it's divided into two kinds.

Half of the openings are creepy-crawly.

The other half are geometric and obeying rules and they're formal, but at least they're not creepy-crawly.

But on the other hand, the creepy-crawlies are having a good time creeping and crawling.

So, it's a harmony of sorts.

And I was free of having to preach and there were no lessons to be learned by studying this thing, but I wanted it to be complicated so that people would wanna study it.

- [Dieter] But then when you really look at it, it is full of motifs of Celtic interlacing patterns.

- In some of his books that we found or the encyclopedias, there were pieces of plants, flowers.

- He was like a botanist.

If he was gonna put an oak tree in the window, he went and found trees, leaves, flowers.

And I'm sure that caused the window to be slow, but he was so exact.

- And he had a small apartment in Reston and he worked in that apartment.

I can remember going and seeing the full-size drawings that he did as that which were enormous.

- [Rowan] I wanted it to be also a harmony of color that would have bursts of brightness alternating with bursts of a shadow and then areas of calm, and of course calm and geometry go together very well.

So you've got a whole bunch of intuitions, some of them bouncy and some of them let us not be bouncy, let us be rigid (laughs) and but not too rigid.

- [Narrator] As Rowan finished each cartoon, he would hand them off to Dieter who was faced with the challenge of translating Rowan's painting into glass.

- When I see Rowan's colored rendering, I start out most likely with an area that has the largest area of, let's say red, and I then pick out of my stock of glass, the reds that have that value Rowan is asking for.

And since it is a handmade material and no piece exactly alike, and also within a piece you have these shadings, I see this wonderful range of color from deep to lighter rose and to utilize that shading within when I cut it up.

So I try to exploit the inherent qualities of the glass and bring it, not to defy it, but to really use it as an advantage.

But then also owners often a need to change pieces.

- I remember in particular going with Rowan to Dieter's and we were in his studio.

The whole gist of going there was to talk about the blue glass.

Dieter had strong ideas for which blue, Rowan had very strong ideas for which blue in which window.

And that conversation took about an hour.

And eventually, there was a compromise on the glass.

But I thought in my mind, "Wow, they have to do this for every color."

(chuckles) - It's so complicated, and stained glass is much more difficult than people think.

People think it's just putting together sticks, pieces of colored glass, by no means.

It's trying to make a harmony, a great harmony.

- I cut the glass or select the glass to have a variety of reds or blues, which all among themselves harmonize.

So you're not really aware of the different shadings.

It's like looking at an, at a fall tree where you have all these different shades of orange or red or yellow, and the overall impression is a yellow tree or a red tree.

- And the fact that they were able to do that translation together I think is they just, they were in harmony, and I think there was a lot more respect for each other than tension between each other because of that.

- [Narrator] While Rowan and Dieter shared a harmony of vision, the day-to-day working relationship was at times uncomfortable when Rowan moved into Dieter's studio to paint the glass.

- I would paint here, and that was a terrible burden I can now understand on Dieter because he didn't have his studio to himself and he did all the cutting of the glass, the mounting of the glass on these plates.

And I wish now I had had the inspiration to do it in my own apartment because that would've been so much easier on him.

But, anyway, he was very long suffering about it and very good natured.

- [Narrator] A brief break in the tight quarters and schedule came in May of 1974 when Rowan married his second wife, Peggy Ann Money, who brought new energy to his life.

- So special, their love and devotion to each other.

They had a close bond, very close bond.

It was, it was good to see that.

There was always happiness and joy.

- I knew that the cartoons were out in his studio, that they were picking glass, he and Dieter, and that right in the middle they stopped and had the wedding.

But I didn't understand at that point if it had a consequence on scheduling.

- [Narrator] With no time for a honeymoon, Rowan was right back at painting the glass, which plays a critical role in controlling the light.

- It's unlike oil painting where you work with reflected light and we work with transmitted light, so we manipulate the glass in terms of how much light it transmits to the beholder.

He is able to manipulate the transparency of the glass by crosshatching, which he does extensively rather than filming it.

So he wants to maintain the glassiness of a window.

So Rowan finished his part of the painting process.

So the paint needs to be fired to become permanently fused with the surface of the colored glass.

The glass has to fire at a temperature of about 1,250 degrees.

Temperature controls on the kilns are set to reach that temperature within 25 minutes.

And we are already in the process, have reached 920 degrees and we have, let me see, six minutes left.

And I hope it knows what it is doing.

(chuckles) - [Rowan] Then he would lead it from lead that he would make on his own little lead mill, which was marvelous.

It was small, but it was able to make the most extraordinary and beautiful and strong leads.

- [Dieter] The tighter the pieces fit, the longer it, the panel will stay upright.

If there's any slag, it would cause the panel to shift.

So therefore, my cutting, fitting, testing.

- Panels grew and grew and grew.

But the whole thing collected in the hall here until the, until they built the rose window in the cathedral.

(bright ethereal music) - [Narrator] The canvas for any artist working on a Gothic rose window is set by tracery, the intricate stone structure designed by the architect.

- The rose window, something like that, this 30-foot diameter circle (chuckles) inside of a stone wall and then you've got all that intricate tracery in the center was a huge challenge for the masons, for the stone carvers, for the stone cutters.

- It's layout, it's all starting from the right point, getting everything the center, getting the bottom stone set, and then bringing them around because if anything's off, then pieces don't fit very well.

All the measurements, sure it's very, very exact in order to install it in the first place and make it look right, but to make the glass fit.

So the measurements are just critical from a center line out the diameter, each radius and how they intersect, and they, to me, a big part of the credit goes to the draftsman.

It's absolutely drawn down to the eighth of an inch.

Basically the draftsman and myself cutting a little bit and checking it with a template and cutting a little bit until we figured out how these things were supposed to go.

So a lot of times, because these are so complicated, as the pieces are set, they don't actually line up.

Sometimes they're offset a little bit.

So we had to trim all those things and make them look like they belonged.

It's a complicated thing, but it's the top of the game.

It's nothing we didn't know how to do but it's all tied to the layout.

If the layout's correct, then things tend to fit together pretty well.

I recommend it to anybody in this business.

It's the most fun.

- [Narrator] As the tracery was being completed, a new challenge arose for Dieter and Rowan.

- The west rose window from the floor is seen against a 15 foot overhang, which cast a shadow on that glass.

And Rowan's idea was to overcome that shadow by faceted glass that gathers light and scatters it and completely ignores this shadow.

And that was in fact I think, an experiment on the Rowan's part and it worked out just wonderfully.

- [Narrator] In fact, Rowan had been experimenting with this faceted glass since he was 16 years old and used it in his earliest windows for the cathedral.

- The glass is poured out when it's a liquid into a steel or an iron frame and there it cools and pops out of its frame and you can buy those squares, which are called Dalle... It's a French word, Dalle de verre, mean simply slab of glass.

- The way you would work with this glass is you score it just like you would score any piece of glass that's thinner, but then you have this, I guess it's some kind of plastic base with this steel rod in it.

And then you would put it on there and just pop it.

- And what Dieter found was that by using these thick slabs of glass, they could be very carefully and cunningly, shapes could be shaped according to a design that would also permit them to be leaded.

- So let's say I'm trying to make a, a little bit more roundish nugget.

Let's see if we can shape this by working around it to get the shape that we're trying to get.

So now we're gonna start saying, okay, let's, let's see what we can do to make this surface irregular.

And for me, I'm guessing as to what this glass is gonna do.

That was a good one.

And this will somewhat adjust the depth of the color because the color is top to bottom in this piece.

So the less of the piece that there is, the lighter the color will become.

It's not as precise as you would like it to be, but the imprecision is what creates the drama in the glass in the light itself.

So... (bright ethereal music) - [Narrator] Once the tracery was finished, Dieter was finally able to begin installing the glass panels, a process that had its own unique technical challenges.

- Technically to make it fit because it's all template work, there are no rectangular point of references, and the rose window also differed in the setting by a detail in the opening that the stone had a rabbet instead of a groove, quarter-inch rabbet, but sometimes it varies, it goes down to an eighth of an inch or 3/16.

So it's a extremely small tolerances.

Then the larger units like the center rosette or the 10 rosettes around the petals were divided by T-bars.

So how to set the T-bars at the right position?

If the T-bars were just off, then the cusps of the rosette would no longer fit.

The answer to that was to have on the template marcations where the stone joints came together.

Then I could refit the template according to the markings I had made where the stone joints were so in that way or the stone did not move, that was fixed, and those were my points of references.

And when the opening literally sucked up that piece, and it followed exactly the contour of the stone instead of struggling to make it fit, that to me was intensely satisfying.

(bright ethereal music) - [Narrator] Back in the studio, the work continued and Rowan took the opportunity to honor some close relations with inscriptions and special pieces of glass.

- My brother had been a glass chemist and he made a number of little glass samples about as big around as a yo-yo.

And I had a beautiful one that was beautiful, clear yellow and built up the harmony of the glass biscuit with suitable surrounding.

And I liked doing that and did similar things with some other glass I had S.A.

Bendheim, the glass dealer, said to Irene, "Miss Irene, a present from S.A.

Bendheim Company," and he beamed, and she opened it and it was a piece of fabulously exquisitely crafted dazzling glass, and it does shoot beams all through the cathedral.

I thought to put a tiny inscription, I said, "A gift to Irene from S.A.

Bendheim," and I quoted a Welsh poet.

He started one of his poems by saying, "They are all gone into the realms of light."

And I thought that was perfect for S.A.

Bendheim and for Irene, both of whom loved the beauty of glass.

- [Narrator] Rowan also honored his second wife in a piece that reads, "In celebration of the new beginning on May 4th, 1974 for Peggy Ann Money LeCompte and Rowan Keith LeCompte, hallelujah."

- There's even a piece of red glass that he's dedicated to his father, "To father," and then the years, so he loved his mom, where's mom?

So I've been spending some time sitting on the floor looking up at the window with a 1200 millimeter lens, you know, trying to find mom, I haven't found her yet.

- [Narrator] In addition to using crosshatching to filter the light, Rowan painted an enormous variety of whimsical details to both control the light and add depth and character to the work.

While this intricate detail added a richness to the window, it also added to the long list of delays which caused ripple effects in the schedule.

- We got into a time crunch.

The object was to have the rose window dedicated for Easter Saturday service and it was somewhere in January, February that we still were working on these pieces and whenever there was a piece ready, I went to the cathedral to put it in.

- [Narrator] Along with the time pressure came financial pressure.

Inflation was eating away at the contract value, and payment milestones were missed, which was very hard on both Dieter and Rowan.

- I just heard about those issues, payments to Rowan, payments to Dieter, or to other entities.

Yeah.

But I didn't see that that it was a all the time issue, you know?

Did they ever catch up with the milestones?

I don't know.

- You know, I know that the calls came from the cathedral, from the dean and from others, and that would worry him.

And mom did not speak openly about their feelings about people that were putting pressure on Rowan, but it was there.

- I felt like an ant moving a sand pile.

There are lots of units to be brought together and after they're brought together, you see that some are unhappy and need to be relieved or altered.

- And it was the work of two people and very tense working relationship and I never had done anything of that nature, of that complexity.

- One of the most important people in the cathedral group was shaking head and saying, "It's a complete flop, it's a complete flop, and we'll have to have something different."

All the large openings were installed already and there were countless little opening and the eyes that were looking at it were blinded by all those beams of pure daylight coming in.

(bright ethereal music continues) (bright ethereal music) - And that was a mighty day when we went to the cathedral and we stood there and Dean Sayre came and stood with us.

And I know Rowan was eager to see it and a little anxious of what's it gonna look like after not seeing it up before, you know, but it was just an extraordinary experience.

- And when it was finally entirely filled, the head stopped shaking.

The eyes that had been blinded suddenly were able to see that it all fitted together and that it was harmonious.

- When I really saw the rose window for the first time with all the obstructions removed, the effect of that light was breathtaking to me.

And it had to do with these nuggets, the thick pieces of glass faceted scattering light like diamonds or like sapphires or like rubies that intensity or that richness.

I had never expected it to be that overwhelmingly beautiful.

- [Narrator] Attending the window's dedication was Washington Post architecture critic Wolf Von Eckardt who had something to say about this modern window in a Gothic setting.

- [Wolf] Today at 4:00 PM, the Washington Cathedral will celebrate the completion of what is surely one of the masterpieces of Christendom.

It's west rose window.

The west rose, the last of the three great eyes of the cathedral, is its crowning jewel.

The work shows again how well stained glass, as originally used in the early Gothic cathedrals, lends itself to convey the new appreciation of pure color and form in 20th century art.

The round window, which is almost 26 feet in diameter, is a triumphant recreation of the medieval art of stained glass work, a glorious hallelujah in colored light.

More than other details of the Washington Cathedral, it conveys, in my view, the spirit of joyous Gothic spirituality, precisely because it does not imitate the Gothic style.

Only the architectural framework is Gothic.

The colored glasswork is frankly of our time, an abstract creation.

I find it as powerful as the great windows of Saint-Denis, Sainte-Chapelle, and Chartres.

- When I think that my dad made that 35 years old, it's pretty incredible, and it has a lot of, that moment of creation has a lot of gravity for me to go back to that building, to commune with my father.

- It's a beautiful window.

And then to remember how much it took to create it.

- I just love it.

I love the concentration of blues, I love the sparkle, and it's my favorite window that he ever did.

- When I'm leading photo tours, as people are walking out on that ledge that then you turn them around and then there's the west rose right there.

You can touch it.

You can see Rowan's name.

You can see Dieter's name.

And then you turn back again and you look at the nave and you see how all this light and love and passion from this window are now projecting back onto the entire nave.

That's really special.

- Rowan's work changed the whole style of stained glass.

You can tell it in the cathedral where the old methods stopped and he started the colors.

With his design, with all that color, it's spectacular.

It just completes the entire cathedral.

- And when that sun is setting, you know, in the evening, especially in the summer, and it hits it just right, you know, that's kind of a religious experience, even if you're not religious.

- I always love to share a quote that C.S.

Lewis once said is that he said the great, "One of the great goals of my life has to been to find the place where all the beauty came from."

And I love that quote because I think it points to the fact that wherever one finds beauty, one finds a reflection of the holy.

And so that window is a huge reflection of holiness because of its beauty.

(bright ethereal music continues) - [Narrator] Recently, a poem that Rowan penned about the Creation Rose, was discovered in a file cabinet.

It reveals a profound meditation that inspired Rowan's work.

- Take this cup away from me.

Yet not what I will, but what thou will.

Here beneath you exquisite rose, the third great eye of this cathedral church, which in fact we are to dedicate tomorrow is perhaps the best place to ponder and understand Jesus' agony and Gethsemane garden.

There he was surrounded by loveliness and peace.

He knows it all must be torn from him.

Horror and dismay came over him, the Bible says.

The more life is radiant, the sadder is the grief of death.

In the glorious splendor of this western rose, all creation glows, vibrant with God's handiwork.

How turn one's eyes to face the darkness?

"My heart," said Jesus, "is ready to break with grief."

That was Gethsemane.

He would have to leave the earth he was born to love.

Look again at Rowan LeCompte's great rose, and you will understand Christ's agony.

"Let there be light," shouts the hub of the great wheel.

"In the beginning, God."

Coals of fire; infinity of blue.

And like jewels around the rim, a multiplicity of forms gathered in the petaled tracery.

Listen to the artist's list of what these forms might suggest to one who stood here in this garden of stone, looking up at the twinkling light.

The Song of Birds at one o'clock, then move clockwise, Phases of the Moon, The Crystalline Order, Ebb and Flow, at the bottom, Ways Through the Wilderness, Seed Into Flower, Green Islands, Spiraling Galaxies, Branching Development, and right at the top, The Four Elements of earth and air, fire and water, all the wondrous marbles of God's making.

But now close your eyes and measure Christ's sorrow in the darkness, when God's miracle no longer can be seen.

Who murders that beautiful planet which is our island house?

Who sullies the air and spoils the water?

Who betrays the trust of children, many yet unborn?

Who builds all those barren walls that shut men in and keep God out?

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Now, open your eyes once more.

The light returns, but it is in a different place.

On the columns of the nave, you can perhaps see the little rainbows cast by prisms in the window.

They move, they almost dance in the course of a whole day.

They are in another spot than when you closed your eyes just now.

And by these rays cast through the eye of crystals, you are reminded that it is not the window itself that gives the light, but the sun behind it, moving across the sky at 93 million miles away.

O you, who sorrow in the garden, is God really so eternally far away?

If his light shining from the other side of the cross can use it as a prism to dance upon the trees and come stealing into the darkness on our side and give life to our death.

What gloom there is on Golgotha, but what radiance beyond to pierce the blackness with his will, not ours, to be done.

It's presumptuous to try to say this shows, oh no, it doesn't.

This is, this is a, a meditation, you might say, just one person's meditation, on the complexity of the universe.

I can't, I dare not say more than just, it's a, it's an unknowing whisper in the dark, but it's happy.

(bright triumphant music) To learn more about Rowan LeCompte and the art of stained glass visit rowanlecomptewindows.com or scan the code on your screen.