Having been purchased and removed from the United Presbyterian Church in Pottsville, then restored by conservator Diane Rousseau in Massachusetts, “Landscape Memorial Windows by Tiffany Studios” can be admired in their new home for permanent display in the Kress Gallery, Allentown Art Museum, Allentown.

“This is the biggest purchase in the museum’s history,” says Allentown Art Museum Vice President of Curatorial Affairs Elaine Mehalakes of the approximate $1.5 million in purchase, transportation, restoration and related costs.

“The other hurdle that we faced was these windows are huge,” Mehalakes says.

To fit the windows in the vertical space in the Kress Gallery, the memorial panels were moved from beneath each tall window and displayed adjacent to it. Ironically, the gallery is located in the wing of the museum that had been a former Presbyterian Church.

“They were painting with glass,” says Mehalakes. The windows’ designers experimented with glassmaking to provide a varied palette of colors and textures for the landscape themes in the stained glass works. Tiffany signatures in the memorial panels are acid-etched glass, Mehalakes said.

United Presbyterian Church elder Heber S. Thompson (1840-1911) is memorialized in the Tiffany window dated 1913. The design depicts a stream cascading through banks lined with rhododendrons in a tribute to Thompson, a Civil War veteran who oversaw coal-mining operations in the region. Inscribed below the landscape is, “Ho, Everyone That Thirsteth, Come Ye to the Waters.”

The Tiffany window created in 1919 in memory of Sarah Ann Derr (1834-1918) features a river serenely winding through a valley with mountains in the background. The longtime parishioner’s son commissioned the work with an inscription that reads, “He leadeth me beside the still waters.”

The two windows are believed to have been designed by Tiffany lead designer Agnes F. Northrop, although the signatures states “Tiffany Studios N.Y.” with the corresponding dates.

Lead Preparator Steve Gamler worked with a contractor to design back lighting for the pair of Tiffany windows. Computer-controlled lighting replicates dawn, daylight and sunset to recreate the experience of the windows in their original setting in the church.

To complement the museum’s pair of Tiffany stained glass windows in the reconstructed gallery is “Tiffany’s Gardens in Glass,” six of Tiffany Studios’ famously lush botanical lamps and three windows along with nine nature-study photographs drawn from the Studios’ own extensive reference collection. These were curated and organized by the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass, Queens, N.Y.

The scenic pair of church windows aren’t going anywhere until the new Allentown Art Museum is built at Hamilton and Tenth streets.

“Summer of Tiffany” programming continues through August at the Allentown Art Museum:

https://www.allentownartmuseum.org/blog/a-year-of-tiffany-programming-announced/

The exhibition, “Tiffany’s Gardens in Glass,” concludes June 29, Allentown Art Museum, 31 N. Fifth St., Allentown, Gallery hours: 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. Thursday - Sunday, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. Third Thursdays. 610-432-4333; https://www.allentownartmuseum.org/

“Gallery View” is a column about artists, exhibitions and galleries. To request coverage, email: Paul Willistein, Focus editor, pwillistein@tnonline.com