Dick Macdonald is a master craftsman of stained glass art.

After 47 years of creating innumerable works of art, he still gets excited about his work.

“I've been attracted to glass since I was a child,” Macdonald said. “My mother would take us to this elegant restaurant that had these beautiful glass goblets, made of ruby colored glass that I loved. I still remember being fascinated by them. And my parents collected Swedish stemware — and I loved their tactile element. I even liked milk bottles. Kids used to break them on the street corners, and I really hated that because I loved glass.”

Macdonald opened his first studio in Cambridge, Mass., in 1967, and another in Arlington two years later, before moving to Boothbay Harbor’s Wall Point Road in 1972.

When he started out in the 1960s, finding others working with glass (to give him some pointers) was difficult. The most he got out of one antique shop owner was, “Put copper foil around it and melt lead on it.”

So he went out and purchased a Bernzomatic torch, a bunch of fish weights and some copper, and created his first lamp.

“It was so heavy you couldn't bend it with a pair of pliers,” he said, laughing. “I still have that lamp. It's green and red Flemish (heavily textured) glass.”

As he continued to literally “piece out” the process of working with glass in his mind, he began making cylinder lamps out of glass scraps. Sheet glass, and certainly high quality sheet glass, wouldn't come along until the late 1980s/early 1990s, and so he used a lot of imported glass till then.

Over the decades as he has been creating his pieces of art, most of which is functional, he has observed how periodic colors are. When he was starting out hot yellows, earth tones, rich greens, amber, gold and reds were popular. Until the early 80s. The colors, he said, “went bland”: blue, clear, pastels, lavender. He recalls receiving orders specifying no red and no amber.

Then came a commission to make a processional cross. It took him a year to figure out how to do it. He brought the cross to a show he was in at New York City's Javit's Convention Center. There he met a buyer for the National Cathedral who was intrigued by the piece and asked him what else he could do.

“I went back to my studio and designed several more crosses,” Macdonald said. “I liked being represented at the Cathedral, and being able to work with cobalt blues, oranges, reds and other church colors.

“All the years I was doing shows, people were always asking, what's new? But, you can't stop making things that sell well. I'm still making some of my designs from the ’70s — and a lot of new designs. It's made my collection of glass quite vast, almost unmanageable.”

That collection of glass runs the gamut: 20 textures in clear glass alone, and hundreds of colors in varying degrees of thickness and color. Heavy opalescent glass, wispy, transparent wispy, hobnail, fractured streamer, which is clear glass with chips of colored glass in it producing a confetti-like appearance.

Macdonald's glass collection is used in his equally vast line of creations: lamps, nightlights, wall sconces, tea light holders, mirrors, overhead lights, sun catchers, wind chimes, lawn ornaments, tissue box holders, wall hangings, panels, table sconces, earrings and more.

One of his most popular pieces, the Funky Mirror, was not one of his designs that started out on paper.

“I do a lot of work just cutting strips and putting them together in different ways. In order to use up the glass, I made abstract borders. I do a lot of open work in three dimension, so I put in chips of glass and squiggles and called it a funky mirror. And damned if the things didn't take off,” Macdonald said. “It's the most popular design I do now.”

In 2008, while MacDonald was away, a fire broke out in his studio and nothing could be saved. He wasn't sure he would be able to recover — artistically or emotionally. To help bring stock up he bought the inventory of closing studios and owners retiring from the business, which brought additional colors his way, ones he might not have selected otherwise.

Macdonald loves to experiment. About four years ago he had the idea to combine his glass with granite. This stained glass master prefers working with one-inch thick glass because you can saw through it and work it with hammer and chisel. Macdonald uses a matrix of epoxy to hold some of his pieces together, including the glass and granite work. Sculptor Dick Alden of Studio 53 cut some blank pieces of stone and Macdonald bought stone working equipment, learned the techniques and made six pieces. But they didn't sell.

Macdonald's windows have been installed in the chapel at St. Andrews and in the Southport Methodist church; a Macdonald Stained Glass lamp sits at the top of the staircase at the family care center.

Most of his work comes from word of mouth referrals, commissions and returning customers.

Recent commissions included three windows for The Tile Connection at Cottage Connection of Maine. While he was on location, he couldn't help notice all the great tiles. He also couldn't help thinking what a cool addition the fish tiles, in particular, would be for one of his mirror designs, like the River Stone Mirror.

His latest series, “Lighting Your Life and Reflections,” includes new mirror, suncatcher, nightlight and lamp designs. The mirror with one of the larger fish is done in blues and greens, the real and dreamy colors of water.

The new Clam Lamp, is constructed of, no, not clam shells, but scallop (5 to 7 inch) baking shells. The shade of the lamps are either of two seven-inch shells or four smaller shells. Stained glass appears on top or on the sides. Faceted glass comprises the stem of the lamp, set on a slate base.

He resurrected his nightlights he made years and years ago, in reds, greens, blues, and amber combination.

The new suncatchers are very fluid, one in particular reminded me of water running in rivulets over stone.

To make hundreds of glass shapes for works that use the same repetitive shape as its theme, he fires up the “robot,” his glass shape cutting machine programmed by a computer.

“I try to create atmosphere with my pieces that also create a statement,” Macdonald said. "I can take a room and make it do something completely different; my square lamps are made of transparent glass. You put one of those in a corner ... light patterns form on the ceiling ... and it's magic."

“I'm always working on something new. Everyday I come up with a new idea — or two,” Macdonald. “If I'm still here at 80, I'll still be doing this.”

Macdonald Stained Glass is located at 7 Wall Point Road in Boothbay Harbor. For more information, and to visit the studio, call 207-633-4815. The website, www.macdonaldglass.com,  is currently being rebuilt. In the meantime, email Macdonald at vatrmn@gmail.com and he will send the new web info when the work has been completed.