The Stained-Glass Eagle

Not everyone wanted the eagle. In a January 1784 letter to his daughter Sarah, Benjamin Franklin called the bald eagle "a bird of bad moral character" and said the turkey was "a much more respectable bird." By then it was too late. The eagle had been on the Great Seal since 1782.

This piece puts the emblem where people have long put serious symbols, in colored glass. The rose window, a great wheel of glass, came out of French cathedrals like Chartres, whose famous blue came from cobalt. In America, John La Farge patented opalescent window glass on February 24, 1880, and Louis Comfort Tiffany patented his own variations later that year.

Here the eagle sweeps left across a rose window with its talons out and its wings spread wide. The feathers are cut into small pieces of deep red-brown, cream and navy, outlined in dark lead lines and gold, and the white head catches the most light.

Behind it, a single white star sits at the center of a burst of blue rays, much like the glory of thirteen stars that breaks through the clouds above the eagle's head on the Great Seal. Rings of red and white glass circle the star, small white stars are set into the border, and gold ornaments fill the corners.