When Paul Phelps, a self-taught stained-glass artist, bought T.C. Esser Glass of Milwaukee in 1986 and created Oakbrook-Esser Studios in Oconomowoc, he said it was as much to acquire the mastery of Minten and other craftsmen as anything.

Calling Minten a "rare individual," Phelps knows his skills are from a different era. "It takes a lifetime to learn."

Or, as Minten puts it in his self-deprecating, understated way, in a thick German accent despite 50 years in this country, "I've had a lot of years I could make my mistakes. Sometimes you learn from mistakes."

He bears a striking resemblance to images of Benjamin Franklin, but he says it was his brother who became the printer in the family. His father was Dutch, a coal miner who later cast lead crucifixes.

His mother came from a tiny, 650-year-old community of farms in Germany, near the Netherlands border, next door to Kevelaer, a noted European pilgrimage destination and rich in Catholic tradition. The Mintens raised Johann and four other children there.

An apprentice at 14

Minten didn't so much as choose stained glass for a career as his teacher chose it for him. When he was 14, a representative of a Kevelaer stained-glass company came to school looking for prospective apprentices.

"I didn't even know what it was," he said. But he was able to ride his bicycle the three miles to the company, and there he studied for three years.

As a Dutch citizen, he avoided the German military draft, but other students couldn't. As a result, young Johann had more chances to work at several jobs in stained-glass making: selecting and cutting the glass; channeling the glass pieces into the grooves of lead stripping, called "came," and soldering them together; cementing around the came to waterproof and stabilize the windows; and mounting the finished product.

Did he enjoy it?

"You don't think about those things," he said. "You just do it."

After his apprenticeship, he worked part time at the company and traveled by train to a nearby city to study design and painting. It was good training, he knows, but "I didn't even know it."

He finished school and stuck with the company that first trained him until 1953 - 10 years from the time his schoolteacher sent him off in that direction.

Johann Minten says he had no big American dream. His German company had been collaborating on projects with the Esser company in Milwaukee, and in one of the shipments, a co-worker wrote a note inquiring about job prospects with the company. Three of the craftsmen were invited to America for jobs.

"I never thought about it," he said. "I only came because the other three had it in mind to go here." When one of them, a stained-glass painter, got cold feet, Minten was sponsored on a special visa and took his place.

Minten settled in Milwaukee, where he still lives, and quickly established himself as a top-notch designer and painter. Even after he returned to Germany for several years because his wife was ill - they later parted ways and he is still single today - he would return to Milwaukee for six weeks each year, continuing his work for Esser long distance.

"They used to call me the flying Dutchman" because of his constant air travel.

In a gallery at Oakbrook-Esser Studios, 129 E. Wisconsin Ave., the firm showcases its breathtaking work - much of it Minten's design, often scaled-down models of windows now in churches.

Minten led me to one he seemed especially pleased with.

It was a half-size copy of a window showing a biblical prophet from the Cathedral of Augsburg, Germany, believed to be among the oldest stained-glass windows in existence. The originals are in a museum, he said, and even a copy is now installed in the cathedral.

Minten traced his fingers along painted black lines, explaining how he even copied the flaws, like the worn and missing paint from centuries of wear. He painted features and shading in techniques honed for decades.

Minten proudly pointed to drawings for seven windows he called The Seven Sorrows of Mary - such as the Flight from Egypt, the Loss of Christ in the Temple and the Crucifixion.