For those who study stained glass windows, reveling in the parables of faith and sunlight crafted by master artisans, the art form is full of unanswered questions.
For example, the information Barbara Johnson could gather listed the brilliant stained glass windows in Pierre's United Methodist Church, with panels done in what is called the Munich pictorial style, as having been made by a "Four Brothers" studio.
Johnson was certain it must have been a typo — surely that was meant to be an allusion to the "Ford Brothers," an established glass-making outfit out of Minneapolis.
But at the start of her third trip to the 102-year-old church, Johnson, a former professor with a doctorate in literature and some patiently acquired expertise in stained glass, had no evidence one way or another.
The identification problem in this case was a common one for churches: an excess of piety. Artists who produced work for places of worship tended not to sign them, so as not to be advertising for the firm in a house of God. Sometimes, however, they would sign the window in the bottom right corner where it could only be seen faintly and in just the right light.
Johnson explained this to a small band of church patrons, art lovers and history buffs accompanying her as she pointed to the bottom corner of one of the panels on the southeast wall of the church. The group looked. Nothing.
While studying the windows on the other side of the chapel, she mentioned the same thing again. That's when Dorothy Collett, with the church's archives, spoke up. She pointed to a small, nearly imperceptible — several people had to stand on a nearby pew to see it — scribble.
After a few moments of squinting and debating, the message was deciphered: "Studio Ford Brothers, Minneapolis." Johnson grew excited. One more century-old mystery cracked.
Information on stained glass seems to stream from Johnson, an affable former professor of literature who taught at the University of Connecticut and in her younger days wrote for the Willimantic Chronicle, the now defunct Hartford Times newspaper in Connecticut and the New York Times. Gazing at the windows in United Methodist, she points out the Munich pictorial style and casually mentions the oxide-rich paint that is kiln-dried so it doesn't wash away. It preserves exquisite detail.
"Look at the painting in the feet, you can see every muscle tendon, every blood vessel," she told the Capital Journal (http://bit.ly/HYeLy8 ), pointing to a panel depicting Jesus Christ.
Elsewhere, while exploring the church's machine-rolled glass, she goes on to describe the Kokomo Glass Co. from Indiana, which made glass for jewelry giant Tiffany & Co. She notes that many glass companies came from Indiana and West Virginia.
For how certain and authoritative she is, it's a bit startling to realize how relatively recently Johnson has become an expert on the subject.
In 2009, a couple years after her husband passed away, Johnson attended a conference of the Willa Cather Foundation in Red Cloud, Neb. The papers weren't capturing her interest, she recalled, but the church windows where they were gathered were a different story.
She asked around, but no one could tell her about them. Her questioning became so persistent she was told to do some research and present a paper on it at the next year's conference.
Her curiosity led Johnson to the manufacturer and its records in St. Louis. While there she stumbled upon papers showing the same company had put windows into the Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Pierre. It wasn't within the scope of her research, but she made copies of the records anyway. It was a move that foreshadowed the next few years of her life.
A short time later, Johnson stopped in Brookings to visit Sherry DeBoer, a friend who also happened to be head of South Dakota Humanities Council. After listening to Johnson's account of the research she was doing, DeBoer asked when Johnson would study the stained glass windows that could be found in South Dakota.
Johnson replied honestly — she didn't have any current plans to.
You have two weeks to write your grant, DeBoer told her.
And so it began. With backing from the Humanities Council, Johnson started to crisscross the state, searching out windows wherever they could be found.
There were some obvious places to go, such as the cathredral-esque St. Anthony of Padua Church in Hoven. But many times she simply set her GPS to find local churches in whatever town she was passing through. If they appeared to have anything interesting she would stop in. Those she spoke with often pointed her toward somewhere new to visit.
Her research was incorporated into an Emmy-nominated documentary for South Dakota Public Broadcasting last year called "Light of the Prairie."
Asked during her stop in Pierre what she will do with all the left-over information she's gathered, Johnson reached into her bag and pulled out a thick book proposal. Flipping through the pages, she commented on all that had to be left out of the documentary for the sake of time. After a brief count of every place she's been, Johnson had to guess there might not even be enough room in just one book.
Johnson's experience has taught her stained glass is deeply embedded in South Dakota and can be found in the most unlikely of places. In addition to the churches, government buildings and other important structures one would expect, she has found beautiful works of glass in barns, private houses and, in one case, a silo in Faulkton that had once been used as a home.
Much was done by significant American stained glass makers and artists, something most residents take for granted or don't realize.
"These names are scattered throughout the state. We have significant parts of American history," she said.
There is also a high degree of individuality to each stop she's made. At Pierre's Methodist church there are four windows supposedly of the authors of the Gospels — only that John the Apostle in this case is replaced with an image of John Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism. That's something she's never seen before.
Then there is an Episcopal Church in Belle Fourche with a window depicting the biblical scene of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. The group she toured it with, made up of regular attendees who had been in the church for years, was surprised when she pointed out a corresponding panel in the choir loft. They had never noticed, but there the disciples Peter, James and John could be found asleep, a subtle treat for the astute observer.
"Stained glass makers do that a lot," Johnson said, "They don't want you to look at it once, they want you to study it."
And it's amazing how windows reflect the culture of the place, she said, such as the windows found in former governor and U.S. Sen. Peter Norbeck's barn, or the silo in Faulkton.
It's also meaningful for her that stained glass can be found in both the office of the chief justice of the state Supreme Court and also at the men's penitentiary in Sioux Falls. Even in prison, there is obvious respect for the window, as there's not a mark on it.
The art truly touches people in all aspects of their lives, Johnson said.
Just don't ask her to pick which of all the windows she's seen is her favorite.
"That's like asking what's your favorite child," she said.
For now, Collett's discovery at the Methodist church means there's more work to be done.
With the found signature, Johnson can move to the next item of business — connecting those windows with the state Capitol Building.
She has been hard at work trying to track down exactly who created the stained glass in the Capitol's dome and above the Senate and House chambers. Those panels are undergoing extension repair work over the next year, which creates the perfect opportunity to study them.
Building committee notes from when they were installed make no mention of who created the panels. Johnson has tracked down a receipt — unfortunately it doesn't say for what exactly — from the Pittsburg Plate Company. That business has connections to the Ford Brothers Studios, either through shared artists or being bought out at one point.
Robert S. Vessey, who was governor at the time of the building's construction and was on the building committee, was also deeply involved with the church, which went up a year after the Capitol. Johnson's theory is that maybe he went back to the same people to put windows in the new chapel.
By comparing similarities in materials and workmanship, she might be able to conclusively prove the link.
Until then, there is some highly circumstantial, but compelling, evidence to support her theory. The glass that originally arrived at the church was six inches too long. A man also nearly died during installation — saved only by the rope dangling from the church's belfry — when some scaffolding collapsed underneath.
It's remarkably similar to how the panels at the state Capitol building also arrived too large for their intended spaces and that a man had died there when scaffolding collapsed.
"It's sounding like the same group of people. They don't measure and they don't know how to build things," Johnson said.
