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Dalle de verre

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The technique called dalle de verre, a method using coloured glass and concrete, developed in France after the Second World War, which Leo THÉRON developed as a distinctive style during a return visit to France in 1964, when he studied the work of Gabriel Loire in Chartres, which profoundly informed his approach to the medium.

The technique of setting glass in a concrete tracery was developed by Labouret and Claudière in the 1930s in France, and brought to high art by the French artist Fernand Léger in the 1950s.

In the book Glass in Architecture and Decoration (Mc Grath & Frost:1937, revised 1961: p310) it is a technique which uses glass 40-60 mm in thickness set in concrete. The glass is cut to the pattern of a cartoon template, the gaps reinforced with an armature of wire and reinforcing steel bars, the concrete poured and assembled into a frame.