A few years after Phil Ruggiero and Phyllis Grand-Ruggiero built their Edmonds beachfront home, a house sprouted up next door.
The couple always expected someone else to build on the lot. What they didn’t anticipate was how much privacy they would lose.
From the neighbor’s house perched high up on a slope, it was possible to peek into the couple’s master bathroom and downstairs dining room.
Some curtains or blinds might have done the job, but the couple didn’t want to block the sunlight or their sweeping view of Possession Sound.
So they called Mark Olson, a Lynnwood glass fabricator and designer. Olson created stained glass windows for both rooms that provide privacy while preserving the view.
Now bamboo bends gently in the wind along a set of curved windows in the dining room. The organic design fits the home’s Asian-influenced look.
Upstairs in the master bathroom, an abstract design graces a set of windows above a marble soaking tub. The glass, accented delicately in pale pink, suggests moving water and offsets pearly pinks in the room’s decor.
The textured glass in the windows provides privacy, obscuring the neighbor’s house. In both rooms, the windows’ designs fade to clear glass, allowing a view of Whidbey Island across the Sound.
“We’re in the business of privacy,” said Olson, owner of Unique Art Glass. “People want art, but they also want security.”
Homeowners also increasingly want a focal point that’s functional as well as beautiful, and they’re turning to glass as another way to add value and beauty to the home.
Art glass is ornamental glassware created in textures and colors. And while incorporating art glass into homes isn’t new (think Victorian stained glass), the way it can be used today is only limited to a homeowner’s imagination and wallet.
A homeowner can specify any of a number of features, such as frameless shower doors, glass kitchen backsplashes, floor-to-ceiling glass panels, cabinets, ceiling domes, and elaborate windows in a rainbow of colors and textures.
Stained glass windows gained popularity in American homes during the 1890s after artists John LaFarge and Louis Tiffany developed new techniques for creating it, according to the Art Glass Association, a nonprofit organization that supports the art glass industry.
Stained glass in the home fell out of favor in World War I and continued to decline in popularity through the middle of 20th century.
Nearly 30 years ago, art glass took off as artists began to experiment with new techniques.
Today there’s more to art glass than staining it. Glass can be beveled, sandblasted and slumped. There are dozens of techniques for manipulating its appearance.
Olson has created custom art glass since he began learning the craft as a teenager in 1977.
“I hung out at all the local studios probably driving them nuts, just soaking up everything I could,” he said.
He studied under some of the best at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, including contemporary glass master Dale Chihuly and German artist Ludwig Schaffrath.
At his modest studio tucked into a row of professional offices, he fabricates custom leaded and beveled glass.
As in every avenue of home decor, styles in art glass have changed over the years. When Olson began designing glass creations in the late ’70s, customers wanted “very cartoon-y looking” stained glass.
In the 1980s, consumers wanted more traditional, Victorian looks, and in the late 1990s Craftsman designs became popular.
Organic designs such as the one Olson created for the Ruggieroes are popular now, he said.
Homeowners have thousands of colors to choose from and more than 50 glass textures. Olson keeps square samples of textured glass in a box at his studio with names like “Crocodile,” with a design like reptile skin, and “Digital,” which has the texture of a computer chip. His pieces are fabricated from a combination of hand-blown and manufactured glass.
Olson designs each project to fit the style and decor of the home and the customer’s wishes.
At the Ruggiero home, for example, he chose more abstract designs.
“The house is contemporary,” Olson said of the Ruggiero home. “Whatever I did couldn’t be literal. It needed to look like something flowing.”
One might expect the artist to go wild incorporating glass art into his own home. But Olson has modestly and tastefully incorporated only a few glass panels into his 1970s Bothell rambler. A textured abstract design in and around the door brings light into the front entryway.
Two vertical rectangular windows flank his fireplace. The design, a grapevine twinning its way up the window, repeats a grape motif in tile on the fireplace.
“We didn’t want something out of step with a rambler,” explained Olson’s wife, Terre.
Custom glass art isn’t cheap but it’s also not out of range for the typical homeowner, Mark Olson said.
Although many of his clients would be considered affluent, more ordinary folks are seeking his services. “When these individuals do it they are passionate about their projects,” he noted.
Most of his projects range from $1,000 to $7,000 and he charges between $150 to $500 a square foot. The more pieces of glass and curved lines, the more expensive the art glass, he said.
Debra Smith is a reporter for The Herald newspaper in Everett.
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