WINDOW OF THE ROSES BY CARL HUNEKE

Marge Huneke Blaine    October 21, 2009

Terry started photographing all my father’s windows about twenty years ago.  Continuing perseverance and research into our archival material identified some 1,200 windows in more than 80 northern California churches that Carl Huneke designed, fabricated and installed.  

As Terry photographed and cataloged the windows his relationships in art glass circles expanded.  One of those contacts led to one of my father’s sample windows being displayed in the Museum of Biblical Art in New York City in December 2002.  Terry and I were thrilled to go to the opening of the show at the museum in New York on Fifth Avenue.  While in New York I remembered a window of roses that my father made in 1965 for Matty Forbes who lived in Rye, New York.  Terry and I had hoped to see and photograph it while we were there, but it never happened.  

A few months later, on a rainy February afternoon in 2003, my memory nagged me about this window of roses that I never got to see.  I chose that moment to pick up the phone and call the City Clerk in Rye, New York.  I told my tale: “I’m the daughter of Carl Huneke …I’m trying to locate one of his windows so I can photograph it…recently had a window displayed in the museum…..sentimental reasons……Matty Forbes owned a house in Rye with a window of roses in it....etc.”  The Clerk said Matty Forbes sold the house, she couldn’t give me the name of the new owner, but gave me the street address - 120 Polly Park Drive and gave me the name and phone number of the City Historian who came in one day a week, that very day!  An immediate phone call to the City Historian with the same story resulted in the name and phone number of the new owner, David Lawi.

I dialed the number immediately.  No answer – but I left a message on the answering machine.  Twenty minutes later Mr. Lawi returned the call.  I asked him about the window of roses in his house.  But this time the response was incredulity!  “Why did you call today??  The house is being bulldozed tomorrow.  I’ve already agreed to sell it to a salvager who is coming tonight to pick up the window.  I’ve already moved out.  I’m just here to pick up a few things that are left.  Who told you to call today?”  I started crying and told him my well honed story.  He was silent for a long time and finally said, “Give me an offer I can’t refuse”.  My mind raced and I blurted, “I can only come up with $1,000.   Would that be enough?”  There was a long pause.  “It’s good enough for me.  It belongs with his daughter, not a stranger.  Write a check today and mail it to me.  And you figure out how to ship it.”  I wrote the check, got it in the 5 p.m. mail pickup; called the museum and got the name of their shipper. Within a couple of hours, I not only found the window, but now I owned it.  

Several weeks later it arrived.  Terry set it up in our living room for several weeks and everyone in the family got to see it.  It was a magnificent faceted glass window, in a twelve foot wide tapering pennant shape, of a vine of red roses, in four three foot sections.  Ruby red sparkled along the green vine.  His name was in the corner –Carl Huneke – one of the few pieces he signed.  

Last year when Connie’s husband, Gary, designed their new home in Woodside, I asked him if this piece might have a place in his design.  He frowned and said nothing.  Much later he showed us his idea. It seemed that my father’s original triangle design in four sections, could be re-arranged to form a perfect rectangle.   Gary, master of space, found a perfect place above the stairwell for the Window of Roses.  

It was installed in its final resting place a month ago.  It’s already become my habit to touch my father’s name on the window each time I pass it, whispering “Hi, Daddy.”

NOTES:

Several family members have windows in their homes, some of which were made to be placed where they are installed, as well as some other smaller windows made by my father as samples.  

In our home we have a pair of faceted glass windows flanking the entry; Judy and Joe Hurley have a small leaded window high in the stairwell; Brad and Ellen Tham have two pieces at their Sonoma house: one faceted glass made for my brother Rudy’s office with Teamster symbols and one a rectangular religious themed sample in leaded glass.  Gus Tham has a beautiful faceted glass window in his home in Novato.  Greg has a duplicate my father made of a window from St Vincent de Paul in his San Francisco home and Tim has some beautiful faceted samples from the Cana Wedding Feast in his home in Carmichael. (Edited 4-21-17)

Miracle at Cana - 1947
Leaded stained glass
41” x 19 3/4”

Miracle at Cana (Four Panels) - 1963
Faceted glass, epoxy matrix
73” x 36”