Meet the Family Behind Colorado’s Stained Glass Empire

Phil Watkins prefers the peace and quiet of his Englewood studio. He doesn’t answer the phone, the door or an email. He thinks computers are stupid, and his flip phone is always lost and never charged. And that’s the way he likes it.

“He says he was born a century or two too late,” says his wife, Jane Watkins. That’s a fitting sentiment for a man who has spent his life becoming a master of a centuries-old trade.

Members of the Watkins family have been stained glass artists for nine generations. The family started working in glass in England in the 1760s before coming to America and ultimately crossing the Mississippi River and heading toward the Mile High City in a covered wagon full of glass and tools. They arrived here in 1868; the first record of Watkins Stained Glass being here is in an 1881 Denver directory.

Almost 150 years later, many of the city’s most beautiful stained glass windows have been created or restored by the Watkins family — from the Colorado Capitol building’s Hall of Fame Rotunda and the window next to the staircase at the Molly Brown House Museum, to the arched windows at the University of Denver’s Evans Memorial Chapel, and even the panels in the doors at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

The business took part in Casa Bonita renovations, designed mid-mod contemporary windows for many local churches, and has restored its fair share of Victorian scrollwork.

On May 14, Watkins Stained Glass will be presented the Sage Award at the Dana Crawford and State Honor Awards, an annual fundraiser for Colorado Preservation Inc. that will take place at the Denver Art Museum this year.

“The Sage Award is a new award,” says Kathy Corbett, architectural historian and chair of CPI’s board of directors. “It’s meant for the preservationists who are our ‘sages,’ meaning they’ve given long years — often a lifetime — of service to the field. Watkins Stained Glass has a deep history of art and craftsmanship in the historic places of Denver and the Rocky Mountain region, and the business has a tradition of passing skills down through generations.”

Watkins Stained Glass has been a key player in making and preserving the best stained glass Colorado has to offer, she notes. “On top of that, they consistently share their time and offer tours of their studio with students of history and historic preservation and other folks in the preservation community,” Corbett says. “I can’t think of anyone more deserving of this new award than Watkins Stained Glass.”

For hundreds of years, the family has passed down its trade secrets to the younger generations. “They were family secrets, but now, as Phil is 79, he’s more willing to explain better, because this is the end,” says Jane Watkins. “This will be the end of the legacy with Phil.”

Phil and Jane have three daughters. Their middle child, Kitt, showed the most interest in the family business: working in the studio, assisting her father, and taking on a big role in the restoration of the windows at Evans Memorial Chapel, which were in extremely critical condition after the chapel was moved to a new location on campus in 1959.

But about three years ago, Kitt suffered a major injury when a 1,300-pound door fell on her foot. Since then, she’s had four surgeries and she’s still dealing with awful pain that won’t allow her to stand on a ladder or carry heavy windows, Jane says. But Kitt’s heart is still in historic preservation, and she recently earned her master’s degree in it at the University of Colorado Denver. She is now working on another degree in Planning and Urban Design.

That’s something the family has always cared about, whether restoring windows or creating new ones. “It is good to restore the Watkins family windows, as they were made so well, and it’s much easier to restore windows that were well-made,” Phil says. “Often, there is a sense of pride knowing that I am keeping the windows in good condition to be enjoyed by others and new generations.”

Restoring stained glass requires duct-taping all the windows, sometimes putting up scaffolding, and taking out each section of glass — often in two or three big pieces. “We bring them back to the studio in Englewood, remove the duct tape, and start taking the windows apart so that we can put them back together again,” Jane says. They replace any damaged lead or broken soldered joints, add new bars and replace any broken glass.

But Phil’s favorite part of the work is cutting the pieces of glass for new windows and putting them together. “It is challenging and rewarding to be creating and selecting glass colors for new windows,” he says.

Watkins Stained Glass has 30,000 square feet of glass inventory in its studio. “We generally work at least six days a week,” Jane says. “Phil keeps saying, ‘I’m done,’ and then he goes, ‘Wait, one more job.’”

More than a decade ago, Watkins Stained Glass played a major role in restorations at the Colorado State Capitol, removing, restoring and reinstalling the sixteen stained glass windows in the Hall of Fame Rotunda, which depict early figures in Colorado history, including Chief Ouray, James William Denver and Frances Wisebart Jacobs.

“We were working on them in August,” Jane recalls. “They’re between the inner dome and the outer dome, and Phil called them our personal cook ovens. It was so hot.”

To restore the windows, they had to go to the attic level of the Capitol, through a trap door and onto the roof. “We’d walk across the roof to every one of the windows to get to the cubbies behind them,” Jane says.

After Phil removed the windows, Jane cleaned them. “It was just so exciting to work on windows that probably had not been touched since 1904,” Jane says. “They were so dirty.”

“These stained glass windows have such finely painted faces and the Colorado Columbine borders,” Phil adds. “It was very much an honor to clean and restore these century-old treasures, and a very difficult, dangerous, and dirty yet dignified job for Jane and me to make them even more beautiful.”

The Rotunda windows and several original Senate Chambers windows were made by Copeland Glass Co.; Phil’s grandfather, Frank, was working with that company at the time as a student in Copeland’s apprenticeship program. For Phil, it was special to think that Frank could have had a part in making the windows he was restoring more than 100 years later.

According to Jane, Phil is usually able to look at a piece of stained glass and tell by the fabrication if it was made by Watkins and, if so, which member of the family made it.

While the family was working on the windows, Phil was also asked to restore the glass globe atop the Capitol building. “He said he does stained glass,” Jane recalls, “and they replied, ‘Well, we think you are the only one in the country who can figure this out.’ So he took on the project.”

When he found out that Watkins Stained Glass would be winning the Sage Award, Phil joked that he was doomed. Just as he doesn’t like answering the phone, he doesn’t like attention, wearing a suit, or being put on a pedestal.

Jane recalls that Lance Shepherd, manager of Design and Construction Programs at the Colorado Office of the State Architect during the Capitol’s dome restoration project, once said that “Phil is a man of few words, but his works speak volumes.”

And they will continue to do so for centuries.

The 2026 Dana Crawford and State Honor Awards, 5 p.m. Thursday, May 14, Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway; learn more at watkinsstainedglass.com.