Kolorystyka zabytkowych okien

The article analyses a number of issues connected with research on the colour of old windows and its conservation and recreation. The author discusses the colour o f windows as part of a monument of architecture and its material structure. Attention is drawn to the role played by the colour of the window and its framing, linked with the elevation and the colour of window joinery as well as all of its elements (lattice, shutters, blinds, etc.), which have been intentionally shaped by the architect and realised by the executor. Subsequently, the author briefly considers assorted groups of undertakings useful in studying the colour of windows: non-destructive investigations (an analysis of historical and iconographie sources) and destructive research encompassing an analysis of the material structure o f the building: plaster and painted surfaces examined from the viewpoint of the presence of polychromy, architectonic investigations and archaeological methods. The article gathers all the criteria which should serve as a basis for the analysis and evaluation of the colour of windows (regarded as an inseparable part of the architecture of a given edifice, the connections between the colour of the window and the elevation and interior of a given building, the uniqueness of its colour and decoration as well as the state of preservation and the possibility of conservation and recreation). A short characteristic concerns changes of window colours in particular epochs. Attention is drawn to the reconstruction of the earliest colours of windows in place of later decoration (nineteenthtwentieth centuries) and the colour of plastic windows installed in historical buildings. The author writes about the conservation of window colours and proposes several methods (the repetition of heretofore applied colour, the reconstruction or designing of new colour), which depend on the time of the origin and the rank of the conserved windows in connection with the elevation of the edifice (original and secondary windows, a disparate complex of windows). The summary assesses heretofore Polish realisations as regards window colours.