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Founded in 1953, the business began when Manlio D. Cavallini’s brother, who had worked with mosaics in Mexico City, moved to San Antonio and persuaded his sibling to open a mosaics business with him.
When the demand for mosaic work began to dwindle, Cavallini “saw the handwriting on the wall” and led the company in branching out into stained glass. While his brother eventually left the company to pursue a livelihood in tile work, Cavallini, beginning with simple designs, graduated to doing more intricate stained glass pieces and the business blossomed.
“When I started the stained glass,” he noted, “it was very hard to even find information about the glass — where you buy the glass, the tools. There were very few stained glass studios and all the studios had their own trade secrets.” There was no shop training or schools and often the necessary tools had to be made by hand. “You just had to pick it up as you went along,” Cavallini said.
Nonetheless, he persevered. Steadily the company continued to grow, turning out a wide scope of projects from stained glass restoration to large-scale architectural glass installations and also opening an adjacent retail store for hobbyists and residential projects. Today, the company boasts commissions that include not only Texas, but Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma, supplying artwork for a variety of religious denominations — all with the aim of creating an atmosphere of beauty and dignity that enhances the spiritual experience.
Their work can be seen locally in the massive wall of stained glass depicting the Last Supper at St. John Neumann Church, in the faceted glass panels of the University of the Incarnate Word bell tower, and in the etched glass panels at Oblate School of Theology’s Madonna Residence, as well as restoration work at San Fernando Cathedral and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower, to name a few of their many projects. Recent work has included some of the window panels for St. Rose of Lima’s new church building and stained glass for Our Lady of the Atonement.
One of their more visible secular projects is at Sunset Station, where Cavallini’s son, Adrian J. Cavallini, restored one of the historic train depot’s massive stained glass windows and recreated from scratch (following intensive research) another that had been lost. It is Adrian, now president of the company, who is primarily the one meeting with building committees or the heads of congregations who have need of the company’s services.
A project begins with assisting the client in articulating the concepts they have in mind. “Most of the time they just have a vague idea of what they want,” said Cavallini, “so we have to take them by the hand and then ask some questions.” Do they want leaded glass (the traditional stained glass) or faceted glass? Do they want symbols or figures? Or do they want a combination?
Once the clients have a general idea of what they want, based on the suggestions and options offered, their ideas are translated into an artistic rendering by the Cavallini’s designer, Roch E. Babin, who has been with the firm for 22 years. He starts off by doing a few designs for approval. “We do a water color rendering and if that’s approved, as far as the design direction, the balance of the designs we’ll do in pencil color,” said Babin. “Generally, people can make the leap of imagination once they’ve seen the water color.”
After that, two full-size patterns are made — the paint pattern, with the painting details, and the build pattern, which serves as a guide for cutting the stained glass and is coded for lead and glass elements. If painting is required, the design is then forwarded on to the art department for hand-painting and firing. Sometimes multiple firings and additional painting techniques are required for the desired effect.
Next, the cut pieces of stained glass are assembled with leading, following the design pattern, and are waterproofed with putty, which is placed between leading and glass to prevent water from seeping through. Reinforcing bars are then added to the interior side of the window as, beyond a certain size, a window cannot support its own weight.
Working with faceted glass is a different process, though the methodology is basically the same. Granules are mixed in a two-part liquid epoxy and poured around chunks of faceted glass set within a wood frame. The glass pieces are cut with a diamond blade saw from 8 by 12- inch slabs of colored glass, the pieces being struck with a special carbide-tipped hammer to produce “oyster” facets that diffuse the light and make the windows appear to sparkle.
The Cavallinis stock around 200 different colors of the slab glass for their faceted glass work and have more than 700 colors on hand in the stained glass, the latter coming in sheets from around the world. There is French, English, Polish and German glass, as well as glass from various areas of the United States, each with its own qualities.
One aspect of the company’s work is restoration, ranging from maintenance level to painstakingly restoring damaged windows. If damage is severe, windows will require complete disassembling, rebuilding with new metal, matching and replacing broken or missing panes, and carefully replicating the style of any hand-painted portions that have been destroyed, working from pictures of the original windows if available. If not, the style of the remaining portions is matched as closely as possible in recreating the missing pieces.
Adjacent to the 12,000-square foot studio and showroom is the Cavallini Stained Glass Retail Center, which faces Vance Jackson Rd. Here they sell decorative panels for residential doors, windows and cabinets (including custom designs), as well as a variety of gift items, from stained glass sun-catchers to decorative bowls of fused glass.
They also cater to the hobbyist, selling everything one could need for stained glass work — kilns, hand tools, grinders, and of course, the glass itself, in more than 600 colors. “We sell from start to finish,” noted Debbie Cavallini, Adrian’s wife, who serves as office manager and is the corporation secretary.
The shop sells tiles and items needed for mosaic work, as well, with classes offered in both stained glass and mosaics. Manlio Cavallini teaches the stained glass course himself.
Son Adrian Cavallini is committed to carrying the family’s magnificent stained glass legacy into the future. He adds, “Hopefully, one of my three sons will carry on this tradition as the third generation of the Cavallini family creating quality architectural stained glass.”
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