Time and Telegraphy: Nineteenth-Century Contexts for Stained Glass

Abstract

Although nineteenth-century writers frequently conceived of rail travel as a dream space of collaged, fleeting, and disjunctive experiences, the transition from everyday life to travel dream state has been rarely explored. This article uses the Flinders Street Station portal (Melbourne, Australia, 1900–09) and its large stained glass lunette to examine the primary role of the station portal as a material and psychological gateway to the railway dream space. I locate the Flinders Street stained glass within a particular historical moment when a communication and technological turn produced fertile convergences between aesthetics and technology. I argue that stained glass was regarded as a med..