Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Michael Felix, owner of Saratoga Door and the Window, has been designing stained glass projects for 25 years.
Shop owner left career in advertising to design glass
By Rebecca Ray
What began as a purchase became a career that has lasted a quarter of a century.
Years ago, Michael Felix bought an American antique window crafted in 1890 for his Marin County home. Little did he know that, after he left his job in the fast-paced advertising industry in 1976, he would open a business designing art glass windows in Saratoga.
The business, Saratoga Door and the Window, still exists 25 years later, at 20430 Saratoga/Los Gatos Road. Felix runs the shop with his wife Helene, who has an art history degree from Stanford University. The couple, who lives in Los Gatos, specializes in designing and installing decorative windows and entryways. The business added entryways to its menu about 15 years ago, five years or so after it moved from the building that now houses Blue Rock Shoot on Big Basin Way.
During their first five years in business, Felix and Helene called it The Window. In addition to making art glass windows, the Felixes made most of their money selling antique art glass windows from around the country.
This was a far cry from the communications arts that Felix studied when he attended San Francisco State University. In college, he also interned for the radio station, KCBS, where he eventually worked as a writer, producer and manager. Felix was even on the air for KCBS for a year, before he switched to advertising.
When Felix bought his first antique window, he was one of four partners in a San Francisco-based production company called Imagination Inc. that made radio and TV commercials and educational films. The company also did original animation and soundtracks for the TV show, "Sesame Street."
"It was pretty hectic, to put it mildly," Felix said.
Felix became interested in stained glass after he bought the antique window, and thought the history of the American Stained Glass Movement would make an interesting educational film. Although he put together a presentation for his idea, he was too busy to get the film off the ground. After he left Imagination Inc., which sold him the antique window, the company asked him to design its commissioned windows.
Felix had never designed a window, but he had researched a lot about windows and had always been a visual thinker. As a child, Felix painted Russian Easter eggs, made Christmas cards for his relatives and was also interested in architecture. He created mosaics in college.
Growing up in a nice home in San Francisco didn't hurt, either--he said he developed a good sense of architecture and lifestyle, and knew such things as how the amount of sunlight in an area affected the size of windows residents wanted.
"It was like going home again," Felix said. "It was really nice to work back with my hands."
Ironically, Felix had minored, rather than majored, in art at San Francisco State, because he didn't see it as being practical.
Today, although Felix employs artisans who make and install the art glass windows and doors, he is the only one at the company who designs them.
Felix designs everything by hand. He has never had the time to learn how to use a computer, he said, and doesn't see why he should, since every design he creates is original.
Once Felix creates the design, artisans cut the glass and the lead that holds the glass in place, and piece them together for the art-glass windows. Other artisans construct the door and frame. The wood surface is finished, and the entryway is installed.
Felix's company has designed doors and windows for thousands of clients not only in the peninsula, but in places as far away as New York.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
