The sound of snapping glass is usually a bad thing, but not in the Colorado studio of Watkins Stained Glass. To Phil Watkins, breaking glass is an essential part of the creative process.
“The craft is the actual cutting an pieceing of the glass with lead into a cohesive object like a suncatcher, window, or whatever,” said Watkins. He describes himself as both a craftsman and an artist. “The artistry part, you’re drawing the design thinking ‘how am I going to make a window out of this?'”
Phil started learning how to make stained glass windows when he was 8 years old. It’s a skill he learned from his father Phil Watkins Sr., who learned it from his father Frank Watkins, who learned it from his father Clarence Watkins. In fact, there are at least nine documented generations of stained glass artists in the Watkins family, possibly more. The family has traced their roots in stained glass back to Liverpool and London. Clarence emigrated to the United States in the mid-1800s and made his way west, arriving in Denver in 1868. The family studio is now located in Englewood.
“I honestly don’t know what they did here in the 1860s because there wasn’t any buildings. And if they were, they burned down.”…