Heavenly Light - Doster Lighting, Inc.

History does not record when, exactly, man learned to make stained glass by adding metallic salts and oxides to glass. Historians tell us that glass was first made in Egypt around the second century B.C. The minerals added to ordinary sand allow the glass to capture specific portions of the spectrum of white light seen by the human eye. Men learned that silver creates yellow, cobalt makes blues, copper generates greens and gold produces a brilliant cranberry. And so stained glass was created for the beauty it held. Abbe Sugar filled his Abbey Church of St. Denis, near Paris, with "the most radiant windows" to "illuminate men's minds so that they may travel through it (light) to an apprehension of God's light."

The art of stained glass has undergone some changes, due to the development of glass paints, stains, enamels, and newer methods of glassmaking over the past 500 years. However, the basic concept has not changed, which is the shaping of a piece of glass, wrapping it with a strip of lead came, and the joining together of them with solder.

Here in Dallas there are a great number of churches who display and celebrate this venerated art form. One church, Church of the Incarnation, has utilized some modern technology in order to make its stained glass even more spectacular.

The jewel-like substance of stained glass is transformed by light which once captured flows from within it. Without light behind however a stained glass window's effect is utterly lost.

The Church of the Incarnation proposed to remedy their lack of light problem in time for their Christmas Eve services. They accomplished this goal utilizing the services of a local lighting company, Doster Lighting Inc. Utilizing high powered fixtures with sophisticated optics from Germany, lighting designer, Jim Doster helped the church illuminate the immense stained glass at the front of the church. It is now possible to achieve the same daytime effect at midnight. All the chandeliers on the interior were also rewired, repaired, and cleaned This church at least is ready to greet the holiday season with "heavenly light."