I do not know for how many churches, perhaps even private houses, Jacques Riousse Fenster worked for. In the photos he gave me, there seem to be many. But I have seen the windows he created in his home chapel in St. Martin de Peille. I have two of his window works myself.
Since I have seen Jacques Riousse repeatedly working on the windows, I can say something about his technique. While in the usual windows the cut glass pieces are set in lead tape and joined together, Jacques Riousse mostly used synthetic resin. He often cut out similarly wide strips of different types of glass and glued them together vertically on a carrier sheet. In doing so, he changed directions and interrupted the structure with pieces of glass, which he obtained from approximately 15x 25 x 3 cm thick glass plates of various colors, often with a hammer (vieux verre, véritable verre?).
He had a good supply of these glass plates, as they were obviously difficult to obtain. In some windows he placed different glass strips horizontally on top of each other and glued them together with synthetic resin. These windows, however, were less durable, some lost their brilliance as dust easily settled on the unevenness.
This described method of making windows allowed Jacques Riousse to create a rarely seen play of colors.
Lead glass windows have been common in Europe since the High Middle Ages. Initially this technique was only used for the windows of large cathedrals. Lead glass windows are an important feature of the Gothic period.
Through his activity as a worker priest, Riousse was always closely connected to the faith and was very interested in the art of the church as a medium. I think that is why he created so many “glass paintings”.
