The classroom at Manor Mill sits inside a building that has been standing since before the American Revolution, and on the weekend of October 17 and 18, 2026, it will fill with the smell of flux, the whine of a glass grinder, and the particular concentration of people learning to coax colored glass into a picture. The two-day Intermediate Stained Glass Course with SmiggArt runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on both days, and it is designed for people who have already taken the beginner class and want to go further.
That "further" is specific. Students design their own suncatcher or panel, work through every step of the stained glass process, and finish the piece with a lead came border and a black patina. Lead came is the traditional method of joining stained glass pieces with strips of lead rather than the copper foil technique many beginners learn first, and the black patina is what gives a finished panel its dark, aged-looking seams. The class description calls it "a great opportunity to improve upon what you already learned while adding some extra details and techniques along the way." There is homework, too: participants are responsible for doing some design work at home before the first session, so the two days in Monkton can be spent cutting, grinding, fitting, and soldering rather than sketching.
Tickets are $275 per person, and the prerequisite is real. This is not an entry point into the craft; it is a second step for people who already know their way around a glass cutter.
The instructor is Sara Smigle, who teaches at Manor Mill under the name SmiggArt. Her instructor biography describes her as a stained glass artist based outside Baltimore who found "deeply satisfying, therapeutic nature in all stained glass process steps, especially beautiful glass colors and textures." She specializes in modern stained glass design, and her pieces have traveled into homes worldwide. Locally, she is known for Baltimore-themed work, including a popular lemon stick design. What began as a hobby became a full-time career and passion.
The setting is part of the appeal. Manor Mill is a restored pre-revolutionary grist mill at 2029 Monkton Road in Monkton, in rural northern Baltimore County. It now houses a fine arts gallery, a ceramics studio, a live music venue, yoga and meditation space, an artisan gift shop, and workshops across a wide range of disciplines. The organization describes itself as "a community built upon creativity and learning, rooted in history," and it was voted Best of Baltimore for classes in 2024.
The history underneath that description is unusually well documented. According to Manor Mill's own account, two mills existed in Monkton at two different locations, both standing on the same large tract of Bull family property and taking different paths after the American Revolution. Research by Dr. Robert M. N. Crosby, conducted when the My Lady's Manor National Register Historic District was being formed, established that the mill now called Manor Mill was the site of the first mill operation in the area, standing on the Fruitful Valley land grant. In 1742, Thomas Brerewood, who owned the entire manor, leased Lot 70 to Jacob Bull and required him to build a mill there.
In 1756, Bull, identified in the records as "Old Jacob," left a water mill and 188 acres to his son Isaac. Isaac Bull sold the tract in 1769 to Thomas Harris, who deeded it in 1770 to Adam Hoopes. Hoopes died the following year and bequeathed the property to his wife, Elizabeth. She sold it to her husband's nephew, Robert Cummins, whose name is often spelled Cummings. Cummins appears to have given the vicinity its name: in a letter dated July 19, 1773, he wrote of "Monckton Mills," recording that he had purchased part of his uncle's estate for 1,400 pounds.
The naming of the village has two competing explanations. One account holds that the village, originally called Charlotte Town, took its present name from the Monkton Mills of a man named William Wynn, who named it for Monkton Priory in Wales. A more supportable theory, cited in the Maryland Historical Magazine, was proposed by Esther Clark Wright in an article titled "The Naming of Monkton Mills." Either way, the name stuck, and the mill kept working. The second Bull Mill, on present-day Matthews Road, had a long life as Gwynn's Mill or Baker's Mill; it still appeared on the 1915 Bromley atlas, though by then it had been disassembled and its stones reused as road metal.
Manor Mill survived that fate. Today it is a newly restored building, and the restoration turned a piece of pre-Revolutionary industrial infrastructure into something closer to a small arts campus. Along with the Monkton Hotel, another restored historic landmark, it forms the core of Monkton Village and serves as a starting point for visitors exploring Baltimore County.
That combination — a craft that has barely changed in centuries, taught inside a building that predates the country — is what makes the October course more than a weekend workshop. Stained glass is a slow medium. Cutting, grinding, foiling or leading, soldering, and finishing a panel takes patience, and the tools and techniques in use today would be broadly recognizable to the craftsmen who worked in glass when Manor Mill was still grinding grain. The two-day format gives students enough time to actually finish something: a suncatcher or a panel, bordered in lead came, darkened with black patina, ready to hang in a window.
For anyone who took the beginner class and caught the bug, the course runs October 17 and 18, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day at Manor Mill, 2029 Monkton Road, Monkton, Maryland. Tickets are $275. Design work before class is required.