Recent Acquisition: Muster zu Glasmalereien

Carl Josef Schirmer (1838-1893) was born in Graz, Austria, in the Steiermark area. Steiermark is located in the mountainous central and southeast Austria. According to our European book dealer, Carl (or Karl) Josef was the son of a glass dealer and studied painting in academies in Munich, Dresden, Berlin, and Stuttgart. He also studied the technique of glass painting with Dr. Stanz in Berlin.

In 1866, Schirmer returned to Graz to become a glass painter. His known windows were installed in parish churches in Gonobitz (a city name no longer in use) and Rottenmann (also in Steiermark), as well as the church at the Benedictine monastery of Admont, Austria (he designed 34 ornamental windows and 3 figural windows for the church when it was rebuilt after an 1865 fire). He also designed windows for one of the Spanish Don Alfonso’s villas in Graz in 1881, and windows for the Turickel’s family castle in Westphalia, Germany.

It is not known with which stained glass firm he might have been affiliated. The book Tiroler Glasmalerei, 1886-1893 mentions the Gobonitz parish church, but not Schirmer. Our few materials on 19^th-century Austrian glass do not include Schirmer or the above locations.

This pattern book has original designs for primarily Gothic arch windows, dated between 1872 and 1878. All are ornamental, and intended for secular buildings, since there are no religious scenes. The designs are varnished Chinese ink and colored gouache on cardboard, and signed “C. Sch”, Graz. The pattern book is part of our group of European stained glass portfolios, published between the 1880s and the flowering of art nouveau windows (ca. 1900). According to Remmer, an author of books on art nouveau windows in Germany, the pattern portfolios were sometimes lithographs or hand-painted, and so expensive to produce that few copies were made. The portfolios were intended for smaller studios to use for inspiration. Several design books with similar geometric and figural windows are Gothische Einzelheiten and Kunstverglasungen: farbige Entwürfe für Fenster jeder Art.

If you are interested in learning more about Schirmer, brief information about him appears in the following sources:

• Steirisches Künstler-Lexikon, Graz, 1883, page 147-148
• Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, v. 30, p. 89
• Geschichte des Benediktiner-Stiftes Admont, v. 4, p. 430, 434

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