RHEIMS CATHEDRAL

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 January 1928, Page 11

RHEIMS CATHEDRAL

TO RECEIVE NEW WINDOWS. The work of restoring stained glass windows in the famous Cathedral of Rheims has been delegated to the family of Jacques Simon since the fifteenth century. Simon is completing the restoration of the nineteenth ot the splendid thirteenth century windows of the cathedral destroyed during the war. Designs of the windows made by his father in 1880 are used as a basis of replacements when storms broke sections of the precious glass. Bits of broken glass are the modern artist’s chief guide to duplication of colours for the windows. Although his father’s designs are in colour, Simon has studied fragments of the original glass wherever possible in an effort to copy, as closely as modern methods can, the rich colouring of the ancient work. . Simon works in a studio equipped for the Rheims Cathedral task. Restoration of the windows is his life work. Of the thirty-nine windows in the church only six were spared by war devastation. The slight restoration of these six was early accomplished. The other eleven which he has done had to be restored in whole or part. The remaining work is the most serious and complicated.