The artisans at Sunrise Stained Glass in London, Ontario have made the difficult decision to close shop after years of manufacturing and restoring stained glass throughout Ontario.
FFor almost half a century, the Wharncliffe Road shop has been a place where hundreds of students interested in stained glass have been taught ancient art, and where the most delicate window panels have found new life.
But now, a “for sale” sign sits outside the business as the owner makes plans to close at the end of the month.
While stained glass began as a simple hobby for Roger Chapman, who opened the store in 1979, he went on to design and fabricate windows in private residences and completed major restoration projects for hundreds of churches from Windsor to Kingston and Sudbury.
“I’ve loved it,” he said, calling the process of rebuilding a window that’s falling apart “rewarding.”
Londoners may recognize some of Chapman’s works. local work. Since the late 1980s, Sunrise has restored almost all the windows at St. Peter’s Cathedral Basilica in London, he said, including the three rose windows, as well as most of the windows at the Anglican Church of St. John the Evangelist.
Sunrise was involved in the restoration of the Basilica of Our Lady Immaculate in Guelph, Ontario, the workshop’s largest project to date with more than 550 stained glass panels, which won an award of excellence from the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals.
Other restoration work by Chapman and his partners in Ontario has included windows at St. Mary’s Pro Cathedral in Hamilton, the Central Presbyterian Church in Cambridge, as well as at Queen’s University and the Royal Military College in Kingston.
The store has also provided the stained glass hobbyist community with all of its supplies and has even offered classes for beginners, which have been held continuously since the store opened, Chapman said.
Chapman and his two partners felt they had become too old to continue the business, he explained, and the store will close at the end of December.
From wicker to stained glass
The first item Chapman created with stained glass was an ashtray he made for his wife, he recalled. He still has it, he added, joking that his first attempt “haunts” him to this day.
His love of stained glass began while he was running his old wicker shop in the 1970s. A stained glass artist worked above his shop, he said, until one day the man disappeared, leaving all his materials behind.
“I thought, well, that seemed easy from what I’d seen,” he said. “So I read a book, used its tools, and started making things myself. And that was the beginning.”
It quickly became a bigger part of his life than retailing wicker furniture and seemed like a more interesting direction to pursue, he explained.
He brought in two new partners, one with extensive experience restoring church windows and the other with a talent for painting, he said, helping the shop expand the restoration work they continued to complete across the province.
Why are stained glass windows so common in London?
London is a lucky place for a stained glass enthusiast, Chapman said.
In the early 20th century, a London company called Hobbs Manufacturing (“the Home Depot of its day,” he said) supplied everything needed to build a house, including a stained glass studio where people could make out the windows.
“That’s why if you walk around London now, you see a lot of stained glass in residential houses,” he said. “Because it was so easy to add that part when you were building a house.”
Many of those windows were replaced with clear glass in the mid-1900s when they reached the end of their useful life, he said, but over the years Sunrise has received many requests from the owners of these older homes for new stained glass, as restoring the homes to their original style becomes more popular, he said.
As more stained glass works reach the point of needing restoration work, Chapman is confident that new professionals will emerge who are up to the task, he said.
“There are still a lot of people who are interested in doing this the same way I am, as a hobby,” he said. “I think the restaurant side of the business is so interesting and rewarding that I think those people will get into it, too.”
As for Chapman, he hopes to continue making stained glass in his free time, he said, but he will enjoy his retirement and stay busy caring for his horses on his farm outside of Goderich.
