One of Edgar Miller’s earliest stained glass commissions was to make a set of windows for Christ the King Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma for Alfonso Iannelli’s Park Ridge studio from 1926-1927. Alfonso was a mentor to Edgar throughout his early career. According to records, Iannelli was asked by his friend, the architect Barry Byrne, to create a set of stained glass windows for a new art deco church in the booming oil town of Tulsa. Byrne and Iannelli had recently finished St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Hyde Park, Chicago, for which a young Edgar helped produce decorative elements.

Iannelli turned to Miller once again for help on this new undertaking in Tulsa, along with other professional decorative artists. The original scope of the design grew over the course of the project, as Byrne convinced the parish to add a new rectory in similar style to the church campus.

It has always been portrayed in the scant writings on the subject of these windows that Alfonso Iannelli was their chief designer, and that Edgar helped him with three of them. It is unclear how many artists were initially hired to assist Iannelli with a massive task of creating sets of stained glass windows for both the main sanctuary and rectory. However, from Miller’s own recollection, there were two other artists, Ruth Blackwell (a longtime employee of Iannelli's) and Olive Rush, who created four of the windows between them. According to various records, there were three done by Iannelli, three by Miller, three by Blackwell, and one by Rush. Again, though, there has been so little writing on the subject, and in spite of these windows’ unquestionable artistic value, we believe their tucked-away location has been one reason academic review has been sparse. In Miller’s writings on the subject, he also hinted at the ongoing marital distress Iannelli was suffering due to his wife Margaret’s mental health issues (she had been in and out of a sanitarium through the 1920s and the prognosis was pessimistic that she would ever fully recover), which caused Iannelli to delegate much of the work on the church to others over the years of its construction.

Another prominent local architect, Bruce Goff, joined the project under Byrne to assist in the design of mosaic installations around the carved limestone altar. Goff would later go on to help create the landmark Boston Avenue Methodist Church, completed in 1929, which also includes Iannelli-designed sculptural work. Byrne’s architecture itself is stunning, and while it reflects some influence of his mentor Frank Lloyd Wright, whom he worked for two decades before, it is mostly Byrne’s own particular expressionistic style of art deco, which was radically new for church construction at the time. The Christ the King church’s structure has been updated and expanded several times, all within the art deco style of Byrne's original design. Even new stained glass windows in a smaller chapel were designed based on the windows in the main sanctuary.

The windows that depict historic and significant royal figures in the main sanctuary are the main attraction at Christ the King. They depict on one side several kings of the Old and New Testaments, and on the other side more well-known contemporary saints. Stylistically, they are all very similar, hinting that they were all designed by the same person, though we know this not to be true. In this case, we assume that one person (likely Iannelli himself or with the generous stylistic assistance of Miller) came up with the style to be employed and then the rest were modeled on the first drafts. This is where Edgar’s writing on the subject throws the provenance into question:

I proceeded to make designs, which Iannelli saw as soon as possible.  He [Iannelli] delayed his designing for a very long time and as I always had things to do, paid little attention.  At long last, Iannelli’s glass was put on an easel in the glass factory.  It was strangely like in design to what I’d made for the three kings.  It might be mistaken for my design. 

 Of course, Edgar’s memory could be wrong, as these recollections were written in the 1980s. For instance, upon inspection, we are fairly certain Edgar was incorrect in his memory of which kings he designed and fabricated. He wrote:

I’ve forgotten whether my window was “Caspar” or “Melchior”, but my second was Balthazar, and after that, St. Steven of Hungary, who stopped the invasion of the Turks. 

When the windows are studied in detail, the viewer finds that Miller incorporated his signature into small pieces of glass in three of the windows, including the St. Stephen, Balthassar, and David portrait windows (pictured above). Iannelli’s signature can also be spotted in the Caspar window, but no others have Iannelli’s signature upon them (Iannelli’s other windows are likely Melchior and Melchisedeck). Only one, the St. Louis window, bore the signature of an artist named Olive Rush. Ruth Blackwell’s name was completely missing from any of the windows altogether, although three of them were likely done by her. It is also possible that all of these artists helped one another to paint many of the individual panes of glass in order to produce them and ship them off to Tulsa in time.

The stained glass windows were produced at Temple Art Glass Company of Chicago, assembled there, and were delivered to the construction site seven hundred miles away. Miller further recalls his days on the job, indicating that his relationship with Iannelli was beginning to fracture:

“For many days in succession he did not appear at the factory.  I called his attention to paint on his glass that had so much gum that it would “fry” in the kiln, most of the paint coming off altogether.  His answer was simply, if the paint comes off, “I’ll run it through the kiln a second time.”  

He never had a craftsman’s sense of the nature of his materials, either of glass or the applied oxide. After almost two months, he took down his glass and fired it.  I doubt that he had spent six days in the painting of it.  He had many private problems.

As soon as I had mounted my glass on the easel, he began to press me.  He was in a hurry to get to his second window.  In less than a week I had finished and he delayed three or four days before his second window was in place.  If Iannelli had the idea that pressure would cause me to make mistakes or lower the quality of my work, I paid no attention. 

This was the last job I had with Iannelli, although he called me several times afterward. I think from his irregular treatment of me that Iannelli was jealous.  To him I seemed to do things easily.  I could never understand jealousy.  The explorations and development of the possibilities in your unknown interior will occupy a full lifetime.  Art, I’m sure does not come from outside.

This would indeed be Miller’s last job he undertook with Iannelli, and his own words seem to reflect his personality as an artist who cared about getting the work done but could also be somewhat arrogant and dismissive. Regardless of the personal problems that might have arisen between Alfonso and Edgar, Miller would always look back on his early years with Iannelli Studios as incredibly formative and worthwhile, and he always respected Iannellis passion for creativity.

Christ the King Church would open in 1928, still in process of final construction, to great acclaim by churchgoers and architectural enthusiasts alike. The installed artworks were at the time and still remain sensationally beautiful. The church boasts some of the best figurative art deco stained glass windows in the country. Liturgical Arts magazine ranked the stained glass installations “among the best to be found in the United States.” Their innovative design, reflected throughout the artistry of the entire edifice, successfully blends art deco, Romanesque, Byzantine, and gothic aesthetics into an eclectic mosaic of glass art.

The magnificent windows at Christ the King Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma remain some of the best examples of both Miller and Iannelli’s liturgical work.