When you take the time to look, the windows of Cranbrook House are surprisingly varied. Some are leaded casement windows straight out of an Elizabethan manor house, others are modern sash windows, fitted with plate glass. A few rooms in the house enjoy a special distinction – their windows are fitted with inset panels of stained glass.

These stained-glass panels were a later addition to Cranbrook House. When first completed in 1908, the windows were all clear glass. It was only while pondering extending the house, in the latter half of the 1910s, that George Booth began purchasing stained-glass panels for his home. The most prominent stained-glass work in Cranbrook House is the 16^th-century Flemish panel, depicting a man on horseback, placed in the main window over the staircase in the Reception Hall.

It was not part of the original design for the window, but added in 1922. That panel, and several others scattered throughout the house, were purchased from Thomas & Drake, an English firm specializing in historic glass.  

Others, like the heraldic roundel in the library’s east window, were purchased by the Booths in Lucerne, Switzerland. There was some debate as to their final destination. George Booth wrote, in a letter to his son Henry, in March 1922:  

They do not make an imposing collection but I think they are good and that everyone will like them – I did think I would let the [Detroit] museum [of Art] buy them at cost if they wished to begin to accumulate some historical glass, but your mother and Florence say no – they are to be put into the windows at Cranbrook but we will see. 

(George Gough Booth to Henry Scripps Booth, 26 March 1922. Cranbrook Archives, George Gough Booth Papers.) 

In the event, Ellen and Florence won out, and at least a few of the Swiss purchases made their way into the windows of Cranbrook House.