Broad sheet is a type of hand-blown

glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...

. It was first made in

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

in 1226.

Production

It is made by

blowing Blowing may refer to: *Air *Breath *Blowing by a whale, from blowhole (anatomy) Industrial processes *Blowing (glassmaking) * Blowing (textile finishing) * Dry blowing, method to extract gold particles from dry soil without the use of water *Melt b ...

molten glass into an elongated tube shape with a blowpipe. Then, while the glass is still hot, the ends are cut off and the resulting cylinder is split with shears and flattened on an iron plate. The quality of broad sheet glass is not good, with many imperfections and mostly

translucent In the field of optics, transparency (also called pellucidity or diaphaneity) is the physical property of allowing light to pass through the material without appreciable scattering of light. On a macroscopic scale (one in which the dimensions a ...

. Due to the relatively small sizes blown, broad sheet was typically made into

leadlight Leadlights, leaded lights or leaded windows are decorative windows made of small sections of glass supported in lead cames. The technique of creating windows using glass and lead came to be known as came glasswork. The term 'leadlight' could be ...

s. The centerpiece was used for decoration in places where looking through the glass wasn't vital. If the piece was large, it was possible to see bubble tracks and strain lines. Other methods for making hand-blown glass included

blown plate glass Blown plate is a hand-blown glass. There is a record of blown plate being produced in London in 1620. Production Blown plate was made by hand-grinding broad sheet glass. As the process was labour-intensive, and expensive, blown plate was mainly use ...

, crown glass (introduced to England in the 17th century), polished plate glass and

cylinder blown sheet glass Cylinder blown sheet is a type of hand- blown window glass. It is created with a similar process to broad sheet, but with the use of larger cylinders. In this manufacturing process glass is blown into a cylindrical iron mold. The ends are cut off an ...

. These methods of manufacture lasted at least until the end of the 19th century. The early 20th century marks the move away from hand-blown to machine manufactured glass such as rolled plate glass, machine drawn cylinder sheet glass, flat drawn sheet glass, single and twin ground polished plate glass and

float glass Float glass is a sheet of glass made by floating molten glass on a bed of molten metal, typically tin, although lead and other various low- melting-point alloys were used in the past. This method gives the sheet uniform thickness and very flat sur ...

. Broad sheet glass was first made in the UK in

Chiddingfold Chiddingfold is a village and civil parish in the Weald in the Waverley district of Surrey, England. It lies on the A283 road between Milford and Petworth. The parish includes the hamlets of Ansteadbrook, High Street Green and Combe Common ...

, Surrey on the border with

in 1226. In 1240 an order was placed for this glass to be used in Westminster Abbey. This glass was of poor quality and fairly opaque. Manufacture slowly decreased and ceased by the early 16th century. The choice of this location may have been due to the availability of sand, the abundance of

bracken Bracken (''Pteridium'') is a genus of large, coarse ferns in the family Dennstaedtiaceae. Ferns (Pteridophyta) are vascular plants that have alternating generations, large plants that produce spores and small plants that produce sex cells (eggs ...

(the ash of which can be used to make potash for soda glass) and the significant beech forests to provide charcoal as fuel for the kiln. Examples of glass from this area can be found in Guildford Museum. Whilst French glass-makers and others were making broad sheet glass earlier than this notably William Le Verrier, Schurterrers and John Alemayne. Between 1350 and 1356 Alemayne secured orders for glass to be used in St. Stephens Chapel, Westminster and St Georges Chapel, Windsor.

References

Glass production {{Glass-engineering-stub