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While stained glass typically focuses on religious themes, some of the more unconventional windows have portrayed the intricate history of pathogens, celebrated military anniversaries, and paid tribute to fallen heroes. They have also incorporated advancements in modern medicine, contributed to energy production, and clarified misconceptions about our planet's geographical features. A few have even sparked controversy and debate.
10. Influenza A Viruses
Inspired by articles and electron micrographs of influenza A viruses, artist Jenny Hammond created a stained glass window that visually represents these infectious agents. Commissioned by Robert and Marjorie Webster from Memphis, Tennessee, this striking piece is displayed prominently near the entrance of their home.
The upper right corner of the window features dark blue glass, symbolizing the global impact of these viruses. Across the top, figures illustrate their transmission path—from aquatic birds to pigs and eventually to humans. Virus particles spread across a backdrop of red glass, symbolizing the fever typically associated with influenza A infection. The particles themselves show how the virus attaches to respiratory passages and lungs, as well as its ability to evolve into new strains.
9. Military Helicopter
While stained glass windows in most churches traditionally depict biblical scenes meant to strengthen the faith of their congregants, the Royal Chapel of St. Katherine Upon the Hoe in England, located within the Royal Citadel church, commemorates the 300th anniversary of the Royal Artillery. The window features a Merlin helicopter, amphibious boats anchored off the beach, and soldiers wading ashore.
The Royal Citadel houses the 29th Commando Regiment. Although the regiment’s vicar, Karl Freeman MBE, acknowledges that the window is an unconventional example of church glass, he views it as “an integration of faith into regimental life.”
8. Muskrat And Chicken
Senior warden John Verrill shared the story behind one of the unique stained glass windows at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Quantico, Maryland. The window was commissioned by Richard Hall, a late congregant, to honor the memory of his wife, Amelia. Hall wanted the design to reflect the character of their Eastern Shore area.
As muskrats are native to the region, Hall included the animal in the window, where it is seen nibbling at the heels of Reverend Thomas Bray, who was instrumental in organizing the Anglican church in Maryland in the early 1700s and “left a legacy of literacy and books.” The muskrat was also chosen for another reason: Father Nathaniel Pierce, the church’s priest, recalled that about 60 years ago, a Roman Catholic bishop in Wilmington declared it acceptable to eat muskrat during Lent, leading to annual muskrat dinners held to raise funds for churches.
7. Wim Delvoye’s Recycled X-Rays
Artist Wim Delvoye’s stained glass windows are more unsettling than uplifting. Created from recycled X-rays of skulls, skeletons, and various bones, these windows adorn the walls of a 17th-century Flemish Baroque-style chapel, itself a unique structure made from laser-cut steel.
The windows feature reinterpretations of traditional figures, with saints transformed into skeletal remains or abstract patterns. Some windows are framed by linked vertebrae, while spinal columns twist into figure eights against a backdrop of deep red glass. Embracing skeletons share a kiss.
6. Slavery
Corey Manafee, 38, expressed his discontent with a stained glass window at Yale University’s Calhoun College by destroying it.
A former dining hall employee, Manafee acknowledges that his actions were wrong, and while the university chose not to pursue charges or seek compensation, Connecticut has charged him with felony criminal mischief. He also faces a misdemeanor charge of “reckless endangerment” since the shattered glass posed a risk to bystanders.
Before Manafee’s act of vandalism, the university had already planned to remove the window, which depicted two slaves entering a cotton field. The charges were later dropped, and Manafee was offered his job back, but an agreement with the university prevents him from discussing the case.
5. Confederate Flag
Originally intended to bring the North and South together, the stained glass windows in Washington National Cathedral, honoring Confederate officers Thomas (“Stonewall”) Jackson and Robert E. Lee, have instead become a source of division. The windows feature the Confederate flag, which many see as a symbol of slavery and racial injustice.
For decades, the Very Reverend Gary Hall, dean of the Cathedral, has advocated for the removal of the windows. However, since the process will require considerable resources, an informational display will be placed near the windows to provide historical context. Hall stated that a representative group will decide on new windows to replace them and determine the future of the Jackson and Lee windows.
4. Solar-Powered
Sarah Hall’s eco-friendly collection of glass facades made of dichroic glass is connected to Saskatoon’s electric power grid. The windows, which are described as “silver, trapezoidal solar cells of various sizes nestled between layers of colored glass,” are collectively known as Lux Gloria and are installed in a cathedral in the Canadian city.
The artwork is expected to generate 2,500 kilowatt-hours of energy annually, powering the cathedral’s electrical needs. Any excess energy produced will be fed into the city’s power grid.
3. Dalek Model
Daleks are mutant extraterrestrial creatures from the British Doctor Who science fiction TV series. Typically shaped like large metal gumdrops, they are equipped with a single telescopic arm and a dome housing a solitary mechanical eyestalk. The Big Finish version of these mutant aliens is “crafted from iron and covered in stained glass panels featuring religious themes,” with “a trident at the end of its arm.”
The vertical stained glass panes around the lower half of the Dalek’s tapered cylindrical body resemble arched windows with four panes each. Together, they create a unified scene. While the model may seem unusual even by Doctor Who standards, it’s sure to captivate attention, as it is designed to do.
2. Mapparium
The Mapparium, a three-story stained glass globe housed in the library of the Christian Science Publishing Society building in Boston, Massachusetts, corrects the distortions of land masses typically seen in two-dimensional map projections. A walkway runs through the globe, and visitors can walk to the center to view the world as it appeared in 1935, when the map was made. Made up of over 600 curved stained glass panes, the globe is in perfect relative scale. For example, due to the distortion in traditional maps, Greenland appears much larger than its actual size, but on this stained glass globe, it is accurately portrayed.
Designed by architect Charles Lindsay Churchill, inspired by a giant globe he saw in the New York Daily News building, the $35,000 ($617,555 in today’s dollars) stained glass globe depicts colonial Africa and French Indochina, rather than Southeast Asia. It also includes unusual names from 1935, such as Transjordan (Middle East), Balochistan (now part of Pakistan), Bechuanaland (now Botswana), and Yanna Tuva (now part of Russia).
Churchill designed the panes to be replaceable, allowing the library to update the globe as the world’s political map changed, but it was ultimately decided that the Mapparium should remain as is, preserved as both a work of art and a historical artifact.
1. American Legion Memorial
On May 27, 2013, the Rose-Harms American Legion post in Grafton, Wisconsin, paid tribute to one of their own. Commander Jim Arentz and former Commander Al Richards unveiled a stained glass window featuring the B-24 bomber that Lt. Roy Harms piloted during the World War II mission in which he and his crew perished.
The bomber is accompanied by figures of a sailor and a soldier, symbolizing the “land-sea-air forces that fought” during the war. The bomber faces Harms's hometown. Created by Gary Elshoff, a well-known aviation artist, the stained glass window, titled “Going Home,” displays the “exact color of olive drab used on the B-24.” It deliberately omits the camouflage paint that other aircraft involved in the Ploesti, Romania, oil refinery bombing mission had, as Harms's plane did not feature it. The window also includes the “U and tail number—240781” of Harms’s bomber.
