Franz Mayer & Co. is a German stained glass design and manufacturing company, based in Munich, Germany, that has been active throughout most of the world for over 150 years. The firm was very popular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and was the principal provider of stained glass to the large Roman Catholic churches that were constructed throughout the world during that period. Franz Mayer and Co. were stained glass artists to the Holy See and consequently were popular with Roman Catholic clients.
History
In 1847, Joseph Gabriel Mayer founded the “Institute for Christian Art“ in Munich, to make ecclesiastical furnishings. Royal commissions for the Cologne and Regensburg cathedrals drew Mayer to create a stained glass department in 1860. In 1865 a branch was opened in London, and in 1888 in New York City. "Stylistically, Mayer's windows tend to contain richly colored scenes bordered by architectural frames consisting of pilasters, columns, architrave and elaborate canopies." It represents an aesthetic that was evidently prized in its time for its craftsmanship and opulence as well as for its ability to engage the viewer emotionally and spiritually. Broadly speaking, the Munich Pictorial Style is Romantic and "owed much to the revival of religious painting - especially fresco painting in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance masters, especially Masaccio, Raphael, and Michelangelo - in Germany early in the 19th-century." "The studio often incorporated imagery from Great Master paintings as well as compositions of the nineteenth century, a standard practice in public decorative work of the era. For example, a window in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Charleston, South Carolina, installed in 1907 or 1925-26, shows the Transfiguration of Christ modeled after the 1517 painting by Raphael in the Vatican." In 1882 the company was awarded the status of “Royal Bavarian Art Establishment“ by King Ludwig the II. In 1892, Pope Leo XIII named the company a “Pontifical Institute of Christian Art“. "Munich glass windows could be imported as art, i.e., glass “paintings” and—exempt from a high tariff on imported “raw” glass... the broad aesthetic appeal, economic advantage, and papal approval made Munich glass windows the overwhelming choice among Roman Catholics in the United States." Mayer's commissions include over seventy-six cathedrals, twenty-six of them in the United States. Along with stained glass, about half of the company's work is in mosaics. In the fifties and sixties, Mayer developed their own fibre-glass mesh. Adhesives have also been developed to the firm's own specifications. The company provides installation and curatorial services.
The Mayer Co. is responsible for stained glass in at least ten of Ireland's Cathedral churches. The work of Franz Mayer & Co. in Ireland is currently the subject of graduate research at Trinity College Dublin..
