50 free Stained Glass trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This stained glass trivia quiz covers the medieval art of controlling light that survives in cathedrals, chapels, pubs and Tiffany lamps. The easy questions cover what stained glass is, the metal strips that hold it together, the round windows of Gothic churches and the American whose name is on the most famous lamps. From there the quiz moves into the craft: the metallic oxides that give each colour, why red glass has to be flashed, crown and cylinder glass, silver stain, grisaille paint, the vidimus and the cartoon, and the iron ferramenta that keep huge windows standing. The hard end covers Benedict Biscop's glaziers at Monkwearmouth, the Lycurgus Cup, Chartres and its cobalt blue, Louis IX's Sainte-Chapelle, Ghiberti's oculi in Florence, the Reformation's smashed windows, Gouda's surviving scheme, the Gothic Revival firms, Morris and Burne-Jones, La Farge's opalescent patent, Tiffany's copper foil, dalle de verre, gemmail, the post-war German school and Marc Chagall. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on stained glass, Chartres Cathedral, Sainte-Chapelle, rose windows and Louis Comfort Tiffany before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our art history and cathedrals quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is glass traditionally coloured with to make stained glass?
Metallic salts added during manufacture
Different metal oxides give the different colours, from greens and blues to wine red.
Q 02What are the metal strips that traditionally hold stained-glass pieces together called?
Cames
They have an H-shaped section; modern makers sometimes use a thin metal foil instead.
Q 03Which metal is used to make the strips that join the glass in a traditional window?
Lead
Joints are soldered, and a soft oily cement is forced between glass and metal to weatherproof the panel.
Q 04Which metallic oxide produces the deep blue of medieval glass, famous at one great French cathedral?
Cobalt
Concentrations of only 0.025 to 0.1 percent in soda-lime glass are enough for that brilliant blue.
Q 05Which precious metal, in tiny concentrations, produces rich ruby-red glass?
Gold
Around 0.001 percent does it; even less gives the paler pink sold as cranberry glass.
Q 06Which additive gives glass an amethyst or purple colour and has been used since ancient Egypt?
Manganese
It is one of the oldest glass additives of all.
Q 07What is 'silver stain', introduced soon after 1300, used to produce?
Yellow to orange colours
It is the 'stain' in stained glass; applied to blue glass it makes green.
Q 08The yellow stain introduced around 1300 was made using which compound?
Silver nitrate
It was usually painted on the outside face of the glass and fired, and was cheaper than coloured pot-metal glass by the 15th century.
Q 09Why must red glass be 'flashed', a thin red layer laminated onto clear glass?
Solid red at window thickness looks black
Once discovered for red, the technique spread to other colours and lets artists engrave through the layer.
Q 10What is material coloured while still molten in the furnace pot called?
Pot metal
Flashed glass, by contrast, fuses a thin coloured layer to a thicker colourless one.
Q 11How is 'crown glass' made?
By spinning a blown bubble until it flattens
The thick centre where the pontil rod held it is still seen in old windows.
Q 12What is the thick lump at the centre of a piece of spun crown glass called?
Bull's-eye
It is thicker because the centre experiences less acceleration during spinning, and it also carries the pontil mark.
Q 13What is the alternative name for the mouth-blown cylinder method?
Muff
The cylinder is slit, reheated and flattened, then annealed to cool slowly.
Q 21Which Roman glass cup in the British Museum glows purple-red when backlit and green otherwise?
The Lycurgus Cup
The Portland Vase is the museum's other great Roman glass, midnight blue with a carved white overlay.
Q 22What did 4th- and 5th-century churches set in windows for a stained-glass-like effect?
Thin slices of alabaster
The translucent stone was set into wooden frames in ornate patterns.
Q 23Which French cathedral, built mostly 1194–1220, was the medieval centre of glass-making?
Chartres
Most of its original glass survives intact, and its blue became a byword.
Q 14What is the black vitreous pigment for lines and shading, fired to fuse it to glass, called?
Grisaille
It mixes powdered glass with iron filings, clay, a liquid and gum arabic, then is fired to fuse it.
Q 15What is the small preliminary design shown to a patron called, from the Latin for 'we have seen'?
Vidimus
A full-size cartoon is then drawn for every light of the window.
Q 16What is the tool-assisted nibbling of glass edges to make an exact fit called?
Grozing
Faces, hair and hands are then painted with a paint whose medium was traditionally wine, vinegar or urine.
Q 17What are the heavy metal frames that divide very large early Gothic windows called?
Ferramenta
Smaller windows were simply tied to iron rods running across the opening.
Q 18What is the circular opening with radiating tracery typical of Gothic cathedrals called?
Rose
Simpler ones with plain spokes are wheel windows; the term rose was not used before the 17th century.
Q 19Round tracery windows are also called 'Catherine windows' after a saint sentenced to die on what?
A spiked breaking wheel
A plain round window without tracery, as in many Italian churches, is an oculus.
Q 20In 675 AD, Benedict Biscop imported glaziers from France to glaze which English monastery?
Monkwearmouth
Hundreds of pieces of 7th-century coloured glass and metal have been found there and at Jarrow.
Q 24How many stained-glass windows does the cathedral 80 km south-west of Paris, famed for its blue, have?
176
UNESCO listed the cathedral in 1979 as 'the high point of French Gothic art'.
Q 25Which French king commissioned the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to house the Crown of Thorns?
Louis IX
Consecrated in the 1240s, it holds one of the world's most extensive 13th-century glass collections.
Q 26In which year was the Sainte-Chapelle consecrated?
1248
It is considered among the highest achievements of the Rayonnant Gothic style.
Q 27Which Renaissance sculptor devised Florence Cathedral's stained-glass scheme, with Donatello among the designers?
Lorenzo Ghiberti
Each large ocular window shows a single scene from the life of Christ or the Virgin.
Q 28Whose injunctions against 'abused images' led to the smashing of English church windows?
Thomas Cromwell
The craft died out in England and was not rediscovered until the early 19th century.
Q 29In which Dutch town does a rare 16th-century glass scheme survive, with windows up to 18 m high?
Gouda
The earliest windows in the Grote Sint-Jan church are by Dirck Crabeth and his brother.
Q 30How many 16th-century windows survive in the French department of Aube alone?
1,042
Normandy and Champagne kept lively ateliers until the early 17th century.