Restoration Glassware

How a Germantown artist found his muse in a stained-glass menagerie.

by Shaun Brady

Michael T. Regan GUIDING LIGHT: Beyer's studio was once a heavy-machinery garage. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

The featureless brick façade of a Germantown warehouse would seem to have nothing in common with the soaring Gothic architecture of Philadelphia's historic churches, or the ornate edifices of the country's most prestigious universities. But amid the workbenches and soldering irons inside, glimpses of those baroque marvels peek out: the paint-on-glass head of a cherubic child resting on a shelf; a bisected art deco Christ momentarily placed in a window; a small wooden box filled with bird wings, the better for modeling the angelic kind. Inside this concrete cavern, beauty is being restored to buildings that have stood for a century, and designed for others still in the blueprint stages.

Founded in 1980 by a husband and wife in their garage, Beyer Studio has grown over its 28 years to become a nationally renowned source for stained glass design and restoration. They count among their clients the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Princeton University and churches scattered across the country.

When Joseph Beyer graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art (now UArts) in 1976, he was a painter without a muse. "OK, now I'm an artist," Beyer remembers thinking. "The question is, what do I paint?"

He didn't have to worry long, as he instantly lucked into a job at Chestnut Hill's Willet Studios, followed quickly by his soon-to-be wife, Rita Bernardini. The two served a four-year apprenticeship before being laid off in 1980, when they went into business for themselves. "We had no kids, no mortgage — not even any pets," Beyer says. "So we went out on our own. It kind of happened by itself."

Over the ensuing decades, the Beyers outgrew a number of spaces, finally landing in their current Wayne Avenue warehouse in 2005. A former heavy-machinery garage, the space offers ample room for each of the studio's 20 artisans to have their own benches.

Much of Beyer's business is in restoration, as older cities like Philly have more than their fair share of churches. Increasingly, as houses of worship close here, their windows are being shipped to the South and Southwest to be incorporated into new churches built for "denominations that may not have been especially welcome in those places years ago."

But Beyer is trying to drive more of the studio's focus to his own designs. The work-in-progress he's proudest of is a series of windows for a church in West Brandywine Township based on the Mysteries of the Rosary, with oddly cut shapes and small figures, made hazy and mysterious by an extra layer of glass, against a background of angelic children.

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Beyer has considerable input into the shaping of new windows, and works closely with clients who don't typically know exactly what they want. He takes full advantage of that opportunity to create work that both serves a church's needs and also fulfills his own artistic ambitions. "I want to give them not so much what they expect, but as much as they can handle," he says. All of the studio's staffers are artists in their own rights, from sculptors to illustrators to painters. Justin Tyner, who has been with Beyer since 2000, instantly took to the medium and began creating his own stained-glass works. He paints figures on glass from models sketched at Fleisher Art Memorial, then frames them with discarded fragments of pre-existing windows. His first solo show, "I Can See Through You," opens this weekend at SoulPurl 77 Gallery.

As excited as the young artists who populate the studio may be to experiment, watching Beyer walk his factory floor proves just how enthusiastic he still is. He pulls a sheet of red glass from a bin, marveling at the whirls and shades and bubbles revealed by the light.

"There's nothing like this that comes out of a tube," the ex-painter beams. "This is the pipe organ of visual media."

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

Justin Tyner's "I Can See Through You" exhibit runs Sept. 20-Oct. 20, SoulPurl 77, 1138 S. Ninth St., 267-528-1367, beyerstudio.com.