No pane, no gain: what may be the nation's largest stained-glass studio seizes the light.

• Author: Kinney, David
• Position: PICTURE THIS - Statesville Stained Glass Inc.

"If you want to assemble simple windows, first mark out the dimensions of their length and breadth on a wooden board, then draw scroll work or anything else that pleases you and select colors that are to be put in. Cut the glass and fit the pieces together with the grozing iron. Enclose them with lead cames and solder on both sides." The monk Theophilus circa 1100 A.D. It's only right that church ties gave Dennis Lackey the chance to buy his business: Churches are where Statesville Stained Glass Inc. gets 95% of revenue, now totaling more than $4 million a year. That's triple what it was 11 years ago when he and his wife, Sylvia, bought the studio, which opened in 1975, from its founder, who wanted to retire. They used to go to the same church.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The 50,000-square-foot operation employs 45 artisans who cut, paint and assemble glass into jewel-like windows, then install them as far away as Japan. Its biggest job was 108 windows for a church in Freeport, Bahamas. It's designing eight to 12 windows for a new chapel on the Duke University campus. "To tell you the truth," Lackey says, "they've never asked us to quote it, but it's huge--well into the six figures." The studio usually has 10 to 15 projects in various stages and completes about 150 to 175 a year.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"I can only tell you what I've been told," Lackey says, "and we're stated as being the largest in the country." (The Stained Glass Association of America, the accrediting body, doesn't rank members by size and isn't aware of any organization that does.) This has been achieved with no advertising--"word of mouth; they call us"--by a man who spent more than 20 years selling screws. When he...