2015Christmas - Stamp Booklet

„…lights are exchanging on the material membrane dividing time from real history: glass. “, are the words by the poet Tonko Maroević. While building the God's house, people were leaving time at outside border and at inner border they felt as participating in real history. The role of connective tissue was always played by light. Although the traces of painted glass - that glass which will later develop into stained glass - can be found already in Roman time, and although the first stained glass in the real sense of the word is found in Europe in Germany in 10th century, the peak of this technique of transforming light falls in the gothic period – when building constructions enabled almost general opening of walls. The inner places of European cathedrals are indeed huge kaleidoscopes which change according to the unrolling of the day and of year's seasons. The glass, coloured by metal oxides, was combined with lead, and that whole network stimulatingly combined with the artistic ideas of medieval art masters.