"Combining a century-old style with modern art glass techniques, New Jersey artist Steven Stelz is creating stunning stained glass windows, the quality of which has rarely been seen in nearly 100 years.

Pine needles - narrow extensions of unevenly-shaped glass - are fused shards purposefully positioned to mimic a true likeness, where other contemporary window artists would have relied on paint to depict such detail.

Similarly, Stelz's vines and floral scenes are produced using 100- year-old techniques of plating - overlaying layers of opalescent glass to create color variations, tone and depth - a result not achievable by light passing through a single layer of glass.

"It's all about the layers," says Stelz, who has been producing these unique windows from his studio in Flemington, New Jersey for the past 20 years.

"It's glass, so you must try to utilize the abilities that it gives you."

Stelz adopted the technique of layering multi-colored opalescent glass and refraining from paint in his work - an American innovation developed by John LaFarge and his competitor, Louis Tiffany, and commonly referred to as the American School of Glass - after seeing the walls of a church flanked with this style of stained glass in the late 1970s. Until then, he had only ever seen the flat panel, painted, European style of stained glass windows.