When you think of stained‑glass art, you probably picture saints and biblical scenes. Yet the world of glass is full of bizarre stained creations that push the limits of imagination—from microscopic viruses to solar‑harnessing cathedrals and even a Dalek from Doctor Who.
Bizarre Stained Glass: A Quick Overview
10 Influenza A Viruses
Artist Jenny Hammond turned scientific articles and electron micrographs into a dazzling stained‑glass tribute to influenza A viruses. Commissioned by Robert and Marjorie Webster of Memphis, Tennessee, the piece greets visitors at the entrance of their home.
Dark blue glass in the upper‑right corner symbolizes the global threat posed by the virus. Across the top, a series of figures illustrate the familiar transmission chain: aquatic birds → pigs → humans. Red glass forms a backdrop that evokes the fever that often accompanies infection, while the tiny glass particles depict how the viruses latch onto respiratory passages, replicate, and spawn new strains.
9 Military Helicopter
Most church windows celebrate biblical narratives, but England’s Royal Chapel of St. Katherine Upon the Hoe takes a different flight path. The glass commemorates the 300th anniversary of the Royal Artillery, showcasing a Merlin helicopter, amphibious boats at anchor, and soldiers wading ashore.
The chapel, home to the 29th Commando Regiment, has a vicar—Karl Freeman MBE—who admits the window is unconventional yet sees it as “an integration of faith into regimental life.”
8 Muskrat And Chicken
At St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Quantico, Maryland, a unique stained‑glass scene features a muskrat and a chicken. Late congregant Richard Hall commissioned the window to honor his wife Amelia and to reflect the Eastern Shore’s wildlife.
The muskrat, a native creature, nibbles at the heels of Reverend Thomas Bray—an 18th‑century Anglican organizer—while a chicken perches nearby. The inclusion also nods to a quirky tradition: about 60 years ago a Catholic bishop in Wilmington declared muskrat permissible for Lent, sparking annual muskrat dinners that helped fund local churches.
7 Wim Delvoye’s Recycled X‑Rays
Artist Wim Delvoye takes a macabre turn, fashioning stained‑glass panels from recycled X‑rays of skulls, skeletons, and assorted bones. These eerie panes adorn a 17th‑century Flemish Baroque‑style chapel built from laser‑cut steel.
The designs range from saints reimagined as skeletal remains to abstract compositions. Linked vertebrae frame some windows, while spinal columns form figure‑eights against blood‑red glass. In one striking scene, embracing skeletons share a kiss.
6 Slavery
Corey Manafee, a former Yale dining‑hall employee, smashed a stained‑glass window at Calhoun College that depicted a pair of enslaved people entering a cotton field. He later expressed regret, but the university declined to press charges, though Connecticut charged him with felony criminal mischief and misdemeanor reckless endangerment.
The window had already been slated for removal amid broader debates about its representation of slavery. After the incident, charges were dropped and Manafee was offered his job back, albeit with a nondisclosure agreement.
5 Confederate Flag
The Washington National Cathedral hosts stained‑glass windows honoring Confederate officers Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee, complete with the Confederate flag. Intended as a gesture of reconciliation, the windows have instead ignited controversy, with many viewing the flag as a symbol of slavery and racial oppression.
Since 1958, Very Reverend Gary Hall, the cathedral’s dean, has advocated for their removal, noting the process would require “time, energy and money.” An explanatory display is planned to contextualize the windows, and a representative group will decide their ultimate fate.
4 Solar‑Powered
Sarah Hall’s environmentally conscious project, Lux Gloria, equips a Saskatoon cathedral with dichroic glass solar cells. The panels are silver, trapezoidal, and vary in size, sandwiched between layers of colored glass.
Designed to generate roughly 2,500 kilowatt‑hours of electricity annually, the windows meet the cathedral’s power needs, with any surplus feeding the city’s grid.
3 American Legion Memorial
The Rose‑Harms American Legion post in Grafton, Wisconsin, unveiled a memorial window on May 27 2013. Crafted by aviation artist Gary Elshoff, the piece—titled “Going Home”—depicts the B‑24 bomber piloted by Lt. Roy Harms during the WWII raid in which he and his crew were killed.
Flanked by a sailor and a soldier representing the land‑sea‑air forces, the bomber is rendered in the exact olive‑drab hue used on the aircraft, omitting the camouflage splotches seen on other planes from the Ploieşti oil‑refinery raid. The window also bears the bomber’s “U” tail number 240781.
2 Mapparium
The Mapparium is a three‑story stained‑glass globe housed in the Christian Science Publishing Society library in Boston. Its 600‑plus curved panes present the world as it existed in 1935, correcting the distortions typical of flat map projections.Visitors walk through the globe, emerging at its center to view continents at true scale—Greenland, for instance, appears much smaller than on conventional maps. Designed by architect Charles Lindsay Churchill, the $35,000 globe originally featured replaceable panes to keep pace with geopolitical changes, but it was later decided to preserve it as a historic artwork.
1 Dalek Model
Fans of the British sci‑fi series Doctor Who will recognize the Dalek—those iconic, dome‑capped alien foes—reimagined in stained glass. The Big Finish version is forged from iron and plated with religious‑themed glass panels, complete with a trident‑shaped arm.
Vertical glass panes encircle the lower half of the cylindrical body, each pane resembling an arched window of four sections. Together they form a unified, eye‑catching scene that’s as bizarre as it is unmistakably Dalek.