PROFILE
Perry Stained Glass Studio Creating multicolored treasures.
T
his story goes back a few years, to the 1960s, when Jim and Liz Perry were living in Santa Clara, California. Jim was a policeman and Liz was tending to three young children. Looking for spare work, Jim began building workbenches for a local glass studio, which in turn led to a job offer to learn the art of designing and creating fine stained glass. Wanting to move back home, Liz and Jim packed up their family and arrived in Seattle in 1971, during the height of the Boeing crunch, and were greeted by the famous roadside sign “Will the last person leaving Seattle—Turn out the lights.” They liked the country feel of Issaquah and opened their first studio here in August 1971. Their focus then, as now, is the creation and restoration of beautiful church windows. As Liz recalls, “Our first location was a storage unit in Rowley Center. There were very few affordable spaces for start-up businesses at that time, and we made do with no running water or heat. We look back on that time as our ‘starving artist in the garret’ episode.” With their stained glass business growing, they soon needed more space, and in 1981 they purchased the old Pacific Telephone exchange building on Front Street, built in the 1940s. This has been their location ever since. Thousands of people pass this small nondescript building every day without realizing that some of America’s finest stained glass work has been created inside.
34 - Issaquah, Sammamish and beyond...
by Fred Nystrom
For the past 40 years Perry Stained Glass Studio has been one of the most respected and sought-after studios for church window restoration and new stained glass designs. Their beautiful work can be seen across the state and throughout the nation. As dad Jim says, with a knowledgeable nod of consent from son Jim, working on reglazing a window panel, “We do both contemporary and traditional stained glass. Our traditional glass is made in the same way they did in the Middle Ages, only now we have better kilns and firing methods. We are blessed that one of only two places in America to produce glass using the antique process, Fremont Antique Glass Company, is here in Seattle. When asked to describe their most creatively challenging work, the Perrys all agree it was the massive 24-by-24-foot stained glass window using 1-inch-thick glass installed in the clerestory of the sanctuary of St. Francis Catholic Church in Bend, Oregon, in 2009. Locally, you can see some of the Perry’s’ beautiful creations in the Community Church of Joy in Sammamish and the Fall City United Methodist Church in Fall City. The next time you drive along Front Street, take a moment to register that Jim, Liz, and their son, Jim, are in their studio working on their newest creation, which will bring much enjoyment, faith, and inspiration once it leaves this tiny studio to be installed as a treasure in a waiting church.
Perry Stained Glass Studio 470 Front St. N., Issaquah 392.1600 perrystainedglass.com