Kakegawa (3) - Kakegawa Stained Glass Museum

This was my first visit to Kakegawa Stained Glass Museum though I heard of it long before. As I’m not a Christian, I’m not familiar with churches and their interior decoration. But after I saw the huge kaleidoscope in MOA Museum of Art in Atami on January 3, I remembered this museum and felt like seeing stained glass.

The museum is located near Ninomaru Art Museum. It looked pretty.

The collection has over 70 items, and most of them were made in England in the Victorian era. They were donated by a private collector with the building of the museum.

In the inner part of the building, there was a set of nine pieces of stained glass “Life of Virgin Mary” made in France in the 19th century. Unfortunately, it was cloudy, so the sunlight was not strong enough to come in through the stained glass. However, this set of nine pieces was still beautiful.

Near this work, I could see an interesting video explaining how stained glass is made in France.

It was a pity that I didn’t know much about Christianity and could not recognize what each piece of stained glass represented without reading description. However, when I saw this piece, I remembered one of the most impressive episodes described in a biography of Jesus Christ that I got from my mother as a Christmas present when I was little. It was “Jesus Blessing Children.”

Jesus in this piece had an affectionate expression, and I felt comfortable. There was another piece that had the same theme. This Jesus looked also affectionate.

There were some people whose names were familar even to me. This is Moses.

I found Saint Lucy who is called Lucia in Sweden.

The piece beside this represented Saint George.

The museum had a souvenir corner, and I bought some postcards. I asked one of the staff members when was the best time to visit the museum because the stained glass might look differently depending on the sunlight. She said that it is a matter of liking - when it is fine, stained glass looks brighter, but when it is cloudy, you can see wrinkles on faces in stained glass more clearly.

However, she also said that it is beautiful when the light of the afternoon sun enters the building through the stained glass and the museum was sometimes opened at night in December. I expected to see stained glass with afternoon sun next time or in a festive atmosphere in December. The staff member kindly gave me some discount tickets. Maybe I’ll visit there again this year.