Chartres stained glass exhibition


June 15 to October 15, 2016
Chartres, The Stained Glass Gallery


15 artists are invited by The Stained Glass Gallery
to provide a window on the theme of Chartres

Pierre Carron, Valerie Gaugeac, Tetsuo Harada, Nathalie Lefevre Genevieve de Marcellus, Jean-Luc Parant, Joedane Ribaud Beatrice Roche-Gardies, Isabelle Rosenberg, Alice Sancey, Didier Sancey, Agnieszka Sekita-Lefèvre, Luc Thieulin, Antoine Vincent, Leslie Xuereb.

Coming from different backgrounds, these painters, sculptors, visual artists or writers, living or having Chartres euréliennes ties reflected at the request of Natalie Zins Loire, a work on the theme of Chartres. They then worked with Jacques, Bruno and Hervé Loire, glassmakers in Lèves, to translate their project with the glass material.
The Loire workshop at their disposal their different expertise: colored glass set with enhanced lead or not grisaille glass tiles set with resin, fused glass, thermoformed glasses ... The artists, some of whom had never approached stained glass, chose the technique that best suits their project.
Each with his artistic sensibility, offers his vision of Chartres. The compositions, often figurative, evoke the city through its essential items such as the cathedral, light, scent, but also the Beauce. Others evoke more symbolic or abstract attachment to Chartres.
Explosion of colors or sober colors, variety of styles and expressions, technical prowess, these windows reflect the dynamism of the contemporary art of stained glass.
These works, intended for fans or collectors will take place in homes or public spaces.


It was in 1976 that Micheline Loire opened at the foot of the cathedral of Chartres, The Stained Glass Gallery, which promotes the art of stained glass.
Each was a stained glass exhibition dedicated to young or new talents, a technique or a theme is presented. In 1996, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the gallery, the exhibition "Chartres Stained Glass" presented stained glass made by master glassmakers and artists on the theme of Chartres.
In this 2016 year for the 40 years of the Gallery, Natalie Zins Loire chose to extend the event by calling on 15 euréliens artists.

FROG: A new system for glass inspection from Deltamax Automazione

When industrial innovation deals with glass crashing and quality control

Have you ever thought about how the glasses of your car would break in case of a strong collision? In many pieces of course, but how many? And how big? Indeed, the number and size of the glass fragments are very important as far as security is concerned.

We are talking about tempered glass, the glass undergoing a specific tempering process including heating and subsequent cooling. Such process renders the glass about four times stronger than "ordinary", or annealed glass. Unlike ordinary glass, which can shatter into jagged shards when broken, tempered glass breaks into small, relatively harmless pieces. This is why tempered glass is used in those environments where human safety is an issue. Applications include side and rear windows in vehicles, entrance doors, shower and tub enclosures, microwave ovens and skylights.

To check the size and the number of fragments in a given glass product in order for such product to meet quality control and security criteria: this is the need of specific glass manufacturing processes. And here’s the invention from Deltamax Automazione, a company from Trento with over twenty years experience in industrial automation and machine vision, and whose mission is to guide its customers in using innovative technologies in order to improve effectiveness and efficiency in production processes.

FROG (Fragment Recognizer On Glass), this is the name of the new system, is a rational and user friendly interface for automatic visual inspection of glass products.

But how does it work? Chiara Corridori, Deltamax Technical Manager explains: “FROG can automatically recognize, count, analyze and classify glass fragments following a glass product break. In addition, it can store the images and the results processed to generate customized reports”. She continues: “The main component of the FROG system is the inspection unit, connected to a PC and to the electrical cabinet: the user can move the system to the desired position and select the analysis functionality in the graphic user interface. At the end of the analysis, the system releases a report on the test results, including the image of the glass as acquired by the camera, the number of fragments identified and the size of the biggest fragments”.

“The advantages of an automatic system for counting fragments  compared to a manual counting system”, continues  Chiara Corridori, “are obvious: quicker and objective results, in accordance with identified standards, and possibility of data storing. Thanks to the use of direct light, FROG is extremely easy to manoeuvre and suitable to be used also with printed glass: two features that make it stand out from competitors using backlight illumination. In addition to the new use, the market appreciates the solution because of the convenient price and because it needs no installation”.

FROG stems from Risolvi, acronym of “RIcerca di SOLuzioni di Visione per applicazioni Industriali” (research of vision solutions for industrial applications), a research project funded by the Trento Province between 2011 and 2015, which has allowed to implement prototypes able to innovate GlassInspector, the system created by Deltamax using camera technology to recognize and catalogue defects, and to inspect glass sheets directly on the production line. The research project has been carried out in collaboration with the TeV group from the Fondazione Bruno Kessler (Fbk) research centre in Trento. The collaboration has been very successful as it involved the transfer of know-how on  Image Processing algorithms as well as software System architecture. As a consequence, a scientist from Fbk is now employed by Deltamax.

Furthermore, together with Fbk, a new software architecture has been designed and implemented (DVS – Deltamax Vision System), which provides new applications with flexibility, expandability and ease in configuration.

This allows computer scientists to reduce developing time and the system installers to modify the parameters in order to adjust the system to a new need without modifying the code.

The artificial vision system, i.e. the use of cameras and optical sensors for the acquisition of images and for the automatic search of defects, derives from the so-called Machine Vision, a branch of Systems Engineering requiring different competences and relying on mechanical-optical-electronic-software systems integrated  solution for examining natural objects and materials, human and industrial artifacts and manufacturing processes, in order to detect defects and improve quality, thus increasing efficiency and safety of both products and processes.

Recently, Deltamax invented an innovative solution for improving systems for defects identification and classification. For such systems, both the hardware (illuminator and electronic control cards) and algorithms have been developed.  For example, starting from an algorithm conceived by researchers at the University of Munich for highlighting streets in satellite images, Deltamax has implemented a new algorithm able to identify scratches in flat glass surfaces images as if they were streets. Scratches and streets in fact share the same geometric characteristics: length, thinness,  and curvilinearity.

Gianluca Diener, manager of Deltamax Inspection Technology area, concludes: “The impact our research has generated is tangible: over the last four years in the artificial vision area the 3 initial people that work on software development have now become 7, of whom one is the researcher collaborating to the Risolvi project. Moreover, the feedback from the market  is positive and we already face an increase in our sales”.

Change in the distribution of machinery for flat glass in France.

A change in the shareholding of Pacard distributor has had consequences for some redistribution of commercial cards.

The arrival of Eric Laurenty in Pacard facilitated the entry of CMS in Pacard instead Intermac. CMS had no real distribution structure for its business machines for glass since the departure of Patrick Guévard and was able in this way to rebuild a place on the French market.

Discovery of the oldest glass furnaces Israel near Mount Carmel

glassmaking furnaces dating back to the late Roman era were discovered at the foot of Mount Carmel, between junctions Ha-Amakim and Yagur, announced Monday the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA). This archaeological discovery is further evidence of the place occupied by the Israeli glass industry on the international stage.

Israel, a major glass production center

Furnaces glass splinters, discovered during excavations carried out in the framework of a railway project underway in the Jezreel Valley, prove that Israel was indeed a leading glass production centers of the ancient world .

"This is a very important discovery with implications for the history of the glass industry both in Israel and in the entire ancient world," says Yael Gorin-Rosen, chief curator of the department glassware in the AIA. He added: "We know from historical sources dating back to the Roman era that the Acre Valley was famous for the excellent quality of its sand, particularly suitable for the manufacture of glass. Chemical analyzes of glass utensils from this period discovered in European sites and wrecks of sunken ships in the Mediterranean region have proved that the glass is rooted in our region. Now, furnaces have been discovered, for the first time, where the raw material used to manufacture the glassware was produced. "

The extraordinary results of these almost accidental excavations have attracted glass experts worldwide. "This sensational discovery is of great interest for the understanding of all the glass trade system in antiquity. Here we have evidence that Israel was a production center of international importance; his drink was widely distributed in Europe and all the Mediterranean countries, "says Professor Ian Freestone of the University College London, an expert in the identification of the chemical composition of the glass.

The site was located by Abdel Salam Al-Sa'id, an inspector of AIA who oversaw the construction of the new railway line linking Haifa to the east. The archaeologist, whose task is to ensure that the work does not affect sites that may have historical significance, discovered pieces of raw glass, antique stalls and a layer of ash in a trench. "We also found pieces of glazed bricks from the walls and ceiling of the oven," says the director of excavations.

Industrial production for a growing market

Furnaces included two compartments: a combustion chamber where burning kindling to obtain a very high temperature, and a melting chamber in which the raw materials (the pure sand and salt) were inserted and then fused to a temperature of about 1200 Co. The glass was then heated for one to two weeks, until huge pieces of raw glass are formed. Some weighed over 10 tons. At the end of the production process, the ovens were cooled and the glass pieces were broken into smaller pieces and sold to workshops where they were re-melted to produce glassware.

The use of glass has largely developed in early Roman times, because of its characteristics very popular: its transparency, beauty, delicacy and manufactured utensils and speed production blow. Become a necessity in every home of the Roman Empire, glass was produced in industrial quantities in specialized centers. The site discovered in the Zvoulon Valley is an excellent example of such glass manufacturing centers.

Remember also that the edict of Maximum, issued 301 of the vulgar era by the Roman emperor Diocletian, mentions two types of glass: the first known under the name Judea glass (that is to say, the Land of Israel) and the second glass of Alexandria (Egypt). The glass Judea was light green and cheaper than Egyptian glass. This discovery now allows to locate one of the centers where this had occurred prized commodity in the Roman Empire.

The ovens will be transferred to the regional school "Carmel Zvoulon" and exposed to the public in a few months.