> What they had was taste, and good priorities. Upper-middle-class sensibilities and attitudes, rather than middle. > They also make stained glass as a hobby;

> What they had was taste, and good priorities. Upper-middle-class sensibilities and attitudes, rather than middle. > They also make stained glass as a hobby; I have no idea how expensive that is, nor how it would compare to buying a similar piece, but they had installed some of their work in their own windows, which added to the class of the place. Pretty accessible, actually. My wife does it off-and-on and is always shocked at how much people charge for not-especially-well-made pieces at e.g. art fairs. The equipment and materials are cheap, as hobbies go. Buying decent finished stained glass pieces is expensive—but getting decent at making it's not all that hard and doesn't take too long, and the materials are cheap. It's one of those "very cheap if you DIY and count the hours as fun hobby-time, pretty expensive if you don't" things. It's especially easy if you just use pre-made templates rather than designing your own, and there are tons of those cheap or free online (and nobody who doesn't do stained glass will think anything of it). I think she only made a half-dozen pieces or so before she was roughly matching the quality of stuff we'd see at art fairs and such. Maybe 30ish hours to reach that level. Very-good tools might run you as much as $1,000 total, but you can get started for more like $150-200 (shop used for the grinder, especially). Glass is glass, it's not really that expensive when you're just buying sheets of it. The biggest pain with it is materials storage and little glass bits getting on the ground in the work area (and sometimes tracked outside of it...) making it kinda hazardous. :-/