Broad sheet is a type of hand-blown

glass Glass is an amorphous (non-crystalline solid, non-crystalline) solid. Because it is often transparency and translucency, transparent and chemically inert, glass has found widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in window pane ...

. It was first made in

Sussex Sussex (Help:IPA/English, /ˈsʌsɪks/; from the Old English ''Sūþseaxe''; lit. 'South Saxons'; 'Sussex') is an area within South East England that was historically a kingdom of Sussex, kingdom and, later, a Historic counties of England, ...

in 1226.

Production

It is made by blowing 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 light scattering by particles, scattering of light. On a macroscopic scale ...

. Due to the relatively small sizes blown, broad sheet was typically made into leadlights. 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, crown glass (introduced to England in the 17th century), polished plate glass and cylinder blown sheet glass. 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 of a low melting point, typically tin, although lead was used for the process in the past. This method gives the sheet uniform thickness and a very flat surfa ...

. Broad sheet glass was first made in the UK in

Chiddingfold Chiddingfold is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Weald in the Waverley, Surrey, Waverley district of Surrey, England. It lies on the A283 road between Milford, Surrey, Milford and Petworth. The parish includes the h ...

, 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 (biology), family Dennstaedtiaceae. Ferns (Pteridophyta) are vascular plants that undergo alternation of generations, having both large plants that produce spores and small ...

(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