100% creation closes its special series around the professions which contributed to the Notre-Dame de Paris construction site with Élodie Schneider, stained glass artist. An emblem of Gothic architecture, the cathedral suffered a devastating fire in 2019. This tragedy sparked exceptional mobilization for its restoration, bringing together craftsmen and volunteers around a common project, like Élodie Schneider, stained glass artist, who tells us about his job and his participation in the Notre-Dame de Paris construction site.
The job of stained glass worker is very versatile so even though you specialize in stained glass, there are a lot of different things and creations to do as well. It is giving, or restoring, light. The idea of colors, textures and sometimes it’s restoration where people are amazed to see their stained glass window differently.
Élodie Schneider, stained glass artist and founder of the workshop: glass adventures.
“ It’s really a job where you have to concentrate. When dismantling a stained glass window, you have to be careful not to break any parts, to throw away your seals, to also wear a mask to protect yourself, because there is also the whole health and hygiene aspect, because we are working with lead, specifies the stained glass artist. Today, we must be very careful with these important constraints for our health. You also need to have a little creative side if you want to create something. In catering, I think that being passionate is the basis. »
Originally from Alsace, Elodie Schneider lived in the region of the Vosges du Nord natural park, a region rich in the history of the glass trades. She was fascinated by glass work at a very young age. After studying visual arts, she turned to stained glass, an art that combines technique and creativity.
“ I learned to handle, to blow, to pick glass, it is the expression in its pure state, in its liquid state, in fusion, and to apprehend this glass. Then, there was this heritage side which attracted me a lot and which is important to me. I said to myself “okay, now I know that it’s stained glass and that’s what I want to do”she remembers. And I was taken to a workshop in the south of the Francebetween Montélimar and Avignon. For two years, I participated in many projects here and there, I gained experience and I passed a stained glass CAP. It exists and it’s a very pleasant way to learn this profession. “.
After her training, Élodie Schneider undertook a bicycle tour of France to discover glasswork and its many techniques.
“ You have to go to different workshops. There was a year between Paris and Lille with training in glass painting to really complete the profession and after a year in Normandy near Étretat, explains Élodie Schneider. Afterwards, I decided to take the bike and continue this experience by doing occasional work. Two months in Pays de la Loire, one week in Jura, four months in Rouen. It was a very enriching experience to ride a bike and meet the artisans “.
It was this thirst for discovery of techniques that brought Élodie Schneider to the Notre-Dame de Paris. “ When the Notre-Dame fire occurred, I was interning at there Dombauhütte Cologne, the workshops of Cologne Cathedral. There are around twenty of them all over Europe, there is one in France, it is in Strasbourg. They have always been there. For example, in Cologne, it has always been present because there is always something to restore. We cannot leave a cathedral without a workshop. This allows for archives, work of very high quality, with people who are specialized in their field and who are, above all, passionate about what they do. That’s why I went on an internship for a month. And during this internship, Notre-Dame of Paris burned. There was emotionshe remembers. I didn’t believe it right away. We think of the French and the Parisians, but the whole world was very touched and the Germans, they had all cried the day before. They said to me “Élodie, what can we do to help concretely, here, now, right away? We are here.” Two years later, I had one of the heads of Cologne Cathedral call me and ask me if I wanted to be with them to work on the Notre-Dame de Paris construction site? Because in the meantime, there were prize pools, but instead of giving the money to the French and Notre-Dame, they asked to be present, to be an actor and to give their know-how. This is how four berries, a lot, were transported in Germany and restored across the Rhine “.
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By participating in the restoration of the cathedral, Élodie Schneider strengthens her commitment to the preservation of French cultural heritage and relied on archives from the INA, the National Audiovisual Institute, in order to analyze the gestures of the artist and master glassmaker Jacques Le Chevallier who created, between 1961 and 1965, the stained glass windows which were the subject of the restoration. “ What was very interesting was that we had archives from the INA concerning Jacques Le Chevallier, who is the artist who created these stained glass windows. We were able to visually find the gestures he used to paint and the tools too. There were some kinds of plastic combs where he cut the plastic himself so that he could reuse it with the grayness that he removed little by little. It was great with these German colleagues, who are in the precision of gesture and who sometimes even go so far as to look through binoculars at stained glass windows to be able to recompose by making the artist’s gesture and we saw them doing it. It was really great to see all this passion and this desire for identical reproduction. It was a lot of work too, finding the recipes, finding the shades. Afterwards, there wasn’t a lot of damage either, so we had a few gaps to repair “.
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Élodie Schneider also played an organizational role in resolving the logistical and technical challenges encountered during this project. “ I am truly a technician, if you can say that, but we had to coordinate with all the trades on site, with project management and project management. I very quickly understood that it was me who was going to take on this role, since I spoke French. With my colleagues in Germany, it was a little more complicated to read the reports, so I did the translations for them. And then we had to be very present, especially when the construction site started in Paris. I sometimes even went there every week for site meetings and to be present and understand how everything was going to happen going forward, manage this aspect on the German side and then also share the information that I had. I of course had chefs in Germany who also coordinated because we had numerous restorations to do, deadlines to meet, a multitude of aspects. It was really intense, but very interesting. For me, it was a very nice experience “.
For Élodie Schneider, it is necessary to preserve not only emblematic monuments like Notre-Dame de Paris, but also other lesser-known buildings. “ We talk a lot about Notre-Dame de Paris, but let’s talk about our heritage! I was called to a very small chapel which burned down in November last year. There are also all these small churches, jewels, our heritage which sometimes unfortunately get destroyed for all the reasons in the world. But we must not forget this wealth today, underlines the stained glass artist. We must continue to think about it and preserve it for the future and we too, for our part, must continue to pass on the level of our professions which are exciting and very demanding and which young people today continue to be. These ideas are also important. »
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