Re: Re: Irish say no to PVC windows

Good news – thanks.

So all in all there’s five types of glass in question here:

. Swirly crown – easily distinguished 1750s glass
. Highly dimpled cylinder – appears to be original, but later
. Modestly dimpled cylinder – questionable provenance, may be mock-historic, may be later again cylinder
. Flat modern glass – probably from the 1960s
. Wavy modern glass – questionable when it was installed

Regarding the cylinder, as you see it Devin the more modest stuff is replacement mock-historic glass installed post-restoration. I’m not so sure – as we have seen, the quality of cylinder glass varies greatly. When making a higher quality product more attention was paid to the flattening-out process to ensuring it was as flawless as could be achieved. Similarly earlier cylinder glass pre-1830s/40s was also of a lower grade to later cylinder, so this could also account for the variety of type in the Trinity windows – very evident as you say in the upper sash of this window:

I’d also have to question the notion of the wavy modern stuff being post-restoration – it is after all in this non-restored West Front window, in abundance in fact:

I do see where you’re coming from though regarding the allegedly mock-histoic cylinder – there is a very clear difference between it and the more intensely dimpled glass. But it does beg the question – if some of the original cylinder is being kept, then why destroy other original panes? It’s either hampering efficiency or it isn’t. Above all though, I just cannot believe for a second that Trinity would even think about attempting to do this, in spite of their record elsewhere on campus. These windows are its most prized asset outside of the Library building – it’s akin to cutting the pages of the Book of Kells down to size beacause they won’t fit in the display case.
Hence I remain fairly optimistic that nothing untoward is going on, and that all the glass dates from a variety of periods – however naive it may be…

Yes the southern block is underway now – which means they’ll spread back out onto the southern West Front before long where there seems to be a good amount of crown remaining. Here’s the southern Square block now with removed windows as mentioned:

Also the giant southern Venetian on Colleg Green being restored back in January:

(thought I’d better airbrush out the contractor’s name ;))
Work was only getting started above, so there’d be no evidence of glass replacement here either way.