KATHRYN FINEGAN CLARK
Villages often guard astonishing treasures. This little tale reveals just one secret tiny Kintnersville, whose population rarely exceeds 70, has been holding close to its heart for decades – fabulous stained glass work.
I had a chance to reveal it in the 1970s. Sadly, I blew it. My children were small then and I was a stay-at -home mom freelancing. Carl Lehr, Kintnersville postmaster at the time, told me about a stained glass artist who lived in the village and suggested I do a story about him. Richard Smith declined an interview and I walked away. But I never forgot it.
My renewed interest began after I interviewed John Lovett a couple years ago. He was an artist who had just opened a studio and antique shop, Bucks Lodge, in the village. He told me it had been the workshop of Richard Q. Smith.
The brick building has exquisite stained glass panels on its front doors. The colors sparkle like jewels in the sunlight. The windows, which have a Biblical theme, would not look out of place in medieval cathedrals, but certainly are a surprising treasure in a village hugging Route 611.
Lovett does not know whether Richard or his famous father, Oliver Smith, created the windows. At first I thought Oliver must be the artist. Now, after questioning neighbors and trolling the Internet, I’m not so sure.
I discovered Richard Smith was a third-generation stained glass artist. His grandfather was Charles W. Smith, who passed on his shop in Bryn Athyn to Richard’s father, Oliver. Richard also worked at Bryn Athyn, but when his father retired in 1960, the shop moved to Kintnersville.
It was the middle Smith, Oliver, who achieved world fame, and I thought how amazing it would be if he had created the local windows.
His work is well-documented and critics place it in the Arts and Crafts style with heavy medieval overtones. He is the creator of the gorgeous windows at Bryn Athyn Cathedral in Montgomery County and at countless other churches and buildings.
The rose window in New York’s Temple Emanu-El in New York is his creation as are windows at Clothier Memorial Hall in Swarthmore and Temple B’nai B’rith in Los Angeles. His fame is such that Princeton University, whose chapel windows he designed, called him “the greatest stained glass artist in the Western Hemisphere.”
None of the neighbors I asked knew who had made the doors. Not even Gary Williams who, in the 1960s. often went with a cousin to the workshop. Richard Smith befriended the boys and let them watch him work.
“There was glass all over the place, all colors, all sizes. He had these big kilns, like pizza ovens, and he’d slide the glass in there to heat it. He was a very quiet man, and I guess that came from working alone all those years, but he was kind to us,” Williams said.
Richard worked directly with his father. According to a 1964 Morning Call article Oliver designed the glasswork for Weaver Chapel at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, but Richard executed the work. It took four years to complete 24 sanctuary windows, each 35 feet tall, and 75 smaller windows in the chapel.
The younger Smith had just completed his own project – designing and constructing more than 50 stained glass mosaics for St. Cyril and Methodius Church in Binghamton, N.Y., according to the article.
Williams has several stained glass panels he purchased at auction after Smith died, and he has the old sign that hung outside the shop. The auction, he said, “was packed,” with antiques dealers from New York City paying huge prices for stained glass and antiques Richard collected.
Williams said, “He also had a lot of old cars and furniture with the overflow stashed in the big red barn across the road.”
Bill Thompson, another neighbor, also knew Richard, and had him design a stained glass window for his front door.
Richard died in 2009. He and his wife, Elizabeth, had lived in the small community chapel close to his workshop. Both are buried in Riegelsville Union Cemetery.
Lovett recently purchased a piece of Oliver Smith’s stained glass from an auction house. The style, offering a peculiar medieval twist to the figures, is so similar to the panels in his doors that we both think Oliver must have created the doors.
Or could it be the work of his son? We may never know. I’ve since decided it really doesn’t matter because both men were master craftsmen. Only Oliver was famous. Perhaps Richard preferred anonymity.
At any rate, one of them left a gift of extraordinary beauty hidden away in a small village.
kathrynfclark@verizon.net
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