Broad sheet is a type of hand-blown glass. It is made by blowing molten glass into an elongated balloon 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. (This is the forerunner of the cylinder process). The quality of broad sheet glass is not good, with many imperfections. Due to the relatively small sizes blown, broad sheet was typically made into leadlights.
Other methods for making hand-blown glass included blown plate glass, crown glass, 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.
According to the website of the London Crown Glass Company, broad sheet glass was first made in the UK in Sussex in 1226 CE. This glass was of poor quality and fairly opaque. Manufacture slowly decreased and ceased by the early 16th Century. French glassmakers and others were making broad sheet glass earlier than this.
Famous quotes containing the words broad, sheet and/or glass:
“Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.”
—Jean Paul Richter (1763–1825)
“There is a continual exchange of ideas between all minds of a generation. Journalists, popular novelists, illustrators, and cartoonists adapt the truths discovered by the powerful intellects for the multitude. It is like a spiritual flood, like a gush that pours into multiple cascades until it forms the great moving sheet of water that stands for the mentality of a period.”
—Auguste Rodin (1849–1917)
“We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)