Thanks to a generous grant made by the Corpus Vitrearum International, the Corpus Vitrearum Newsletter has been digitized and is now available free of charge. Scholars and enthusiasts alike are strongly encouraged to dip in.
Fig. 1. The Corpus Vitrearum Newsletter
The Newsletter was published on an occasional basis between 1972 and 2001. What began as a typed circular for conservators, produced under the auspices of the British technical subcommittee by the seemingly indefatigable Roy Newton, increased in length and readership over a number of years. Responsibility for publication subsequently came into the hands of the Corpus Vitrearum International, and production moved from the Department of Physics at the University of York, first to ICCROM (International Center for the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) in Rome, then to the Centre International du Vitrail in Chartres, and finally to the Centre Suisse de recherche et d’information sur le vitrail in Romont, from where the last two issues of the Newsletter (47 and 48) can still be purchased.
The Newsletter covers an extraordinarily wide range of material, including reports on one-off trials, detailed discussions of materials used in restoration, and coverage of important ongoing experiments. There is also a significant series of several hundred abstracts, the continuation of a series initiated by Roy Newton before the first issue of the Newsletter appeared. While the first issues of the Newsletter are in English, nos. 5–25 appeared in English and German, and thereafter issues contained material in English, French and German.
In 2010, the copyright holders (the British CVMA and the Corpus Vitrearum International) kindly gave permission for the Newsletter to be made available in pdf format on the web. The Newsletter is now freely available on the website of the Corpus Vitrearum International, together with a detailed introduction, the complete series of abstracts, a concordance, and – most importantly – a brand new index to all issues of the Newsletter.
