He designs and creates his work in his studio on the ground floor of his home - a one-room schoolhouse built in 1849 that he renovated with muralist and painter Norma Reichling, his life partner, as he calls her, for the last 15 years.
Various tools of his trade dot the landscape of his studio, all recycled and customized by the master himself. Wooden nooks and vertical compartments line the walls, housing small glass jewels and shards and sheets of translucent, cloudy and textured glass organized neatly by color.
He and his assistants snip and snap the sheets into small, mosaiclike pieces that, when wrapped with soft lead, fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, playing off color and light.
Glare, he said, is the enemy.
Sigstedt is a slender, bearded, agile father of five who wears a long braid down his back and has spent years fighting for environmental causes. He said he liked the longevity and simplicity of his craft.
Raised in Bryn Athyn, Sigstedt said he had expected to be a woodcarver, like his father, who was born in Sweden. Faced with tough economic times in the late 1940s, Sigstedt said, he turned to a potentially more lucrative craft - but not without trepidation. "I thought I was ruining my career at the time," he said.
He did rejoin his father's business from the late 1950s to 1961.
But his stained-glass business, which began with small trinkets made for shops in New Hope, has flourished. Since the 1970s, Sigstedt has designed pieces for the swank Tavern on the Green in New York, including a window and several hanging shades. He also repaired the enormous star that shines from the ceiling of the Russian Tea Room.
"If we have any special thing that needs to be made, we'll call Val," said Jeffrey Higginbottom, senior designer for LeRoy Adventures, the company that owns the two restaurants. "He's one of the last of the greats."
