Donald MacDonald (craftsman)

Donald MacDonald (1841-1916) was a leading stained glass artisan and designer in 19th century Boston. Born Donald McDonald, he altered the spelling of his surname to "MacDonald" around 1877.

Born in 1841, the son of a Scottish farmer, in the Gorbals district of Glasgow, MacDonald was trained as a glass painter in London. By 1863, he was a partner in the London firm of McMillan & McDonald of Camden Town, furnishing stained glass for the New Stepney Meetinghouse (destroyed) in the Tower Hamlets district of East London. In 1868, he settled in Boston, probably at the urging of William Robert Ware (1832-1915), founder of the school of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ware was instrumental in MacDonald's early career in Boston, providing professional introductions and commissions, using samples of MacDonald's glass work to illustrate his lectures and commending MacDonald publicly for his efforts to improve the art of stained glass in the U.S.

In Boston, MacDonald was first employed with J.M. Cook's Boston Stained & Cut Glass Works. In 1872, he entered into partnership with William J. McPherson (1821-1900), a leading decorative painter and interior designer, for whom he organized a stained glass department within the firm of W.J. McPherson Co. In collaboration with McPherson, MacDonald produced delicately hand painted decorative glazing ensembles, often on a monumental scale. Among these were the Harvard College Appleton Chapel renovations in 1873 (destroyed) for Peabody & Stearns and Harvard Memorial Hall in 1874 for Ware & Van Brunt. As early as 1872, he introduced "doubling" or layering glass for decorative and pictorial effect in a memorial window depicting "Charity and Devotion" at St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Lowell, Massachusetts. At the direction of Ware and McPherson, he collaborated with John La Farge (1835-1910) on a number of experimental works and in 1874 produced the first opalescent picture window for Harvard's Memorial Hall (now lost). In 1876, the partnership with McPherson ended in financial dispute. In the following year, he organized "MacDonald & Co, Decorators and Specialists in Stained Glass." It was around this time that he altered the spelling of his name.

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