"Peonies Blown in Wind " window, John LaFarge (American 1835-1910) 1886, Leaded stained and opalescent glass, *Museum of Fine Arts General Funds, *Photograph @ Museum of F.A., Boston

John La Farge, painter, stained glass designer. Among his many commissions, decoration of the Trinity Church in Boston placed La Farge at the forefront of the American Arts and Crafts movement. He early admired the formality and patterning of Japanese art, and he recorded his impressions of his travels in Asia in An Artist’s Letters from Japan (1897). La Farge’s stained-glass windows reflect the Gilded Age fascination with medieval art and craftsmanship. The industrial revolution had made inexpensive, mass-produced glass available to anyone, but art glass remained an emblem of wealth and good taste (excerpt from Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery).  La Farge experimented with color problems in medium of stained glass.  Opalescent glass invention of superimposing and welding his material.