Polished plate is a type of hand-blown glass. It is produced by casting glass onto a table and then subsequently grinding and polishing the glass. This was originally done by hand, and then later by machine. It was an expensive process requiring a large capital investment.
Other methods of producing hand-blown window glass included: broad sheet, blown plate, crown glass and cylinder blown sheet. 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, machine drawn cylinder sheet, flat drawn sheet, single and twin ground polished plate and float glass.
The Frenchman, Louis Lucas de Nehou, in 1688, in conjunction with A. Thevart, succeeded in perfecting the process of casting plate-glass. Mirror plates previous to the invention had been made from blown "sheet" glass, and were consequently very limited in size. De Nehou's process of rolling molten glass poured on an iron table rendered the manufacture of very large plates possible.
In 1773 English polished plate (by the French process) was produced at Ravenhead.
By 1800 a steam engine was used to carry out the grinding and polishing of the cast glass.
Famous quotes containing the words plate glass, polished, plate and/or glass:
“I sometimes have the sense that I live my life as a writer with my nose pressed against the wide, shiny plate glass window of the “mainstream” culture. The world seems full of straight, large-circulation, slick periodicals which wouldn’t think of reviewing my book and bookstores which will never order it.”
—Jan Clausen (b. 1943)
“Greek is the embodiment of the fluent speech that runs or soars, the speech of a people which could not help giving winged feet to its god of art. Latin is the embodiment of the weighty and concentrated speech which is hammered and pressed and polished into the shape of its perfection, as the ethically minded Romans believed that the soul also should be wrought.”
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939)
“Then he rang the bell and ordered a ham sandwich. When the maid placed the plate on the table, he deliberately looked away but as soon as the door had shut, he grabbed the sandwich with both hands, immediately soiled his fingers and chin with the hanging margin of fat and, grunting greedily, began to much.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“My glass shall not persuade me I am old
So long as youth and thou are of one date,
But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)