Blown plate is a 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 ...

. There is a record of blown plate being produced in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

in 1620.

Production

Blown plate was made by hand-grinding

broad sheet Broad sheet is a type of hand-blown glass. It was first made in Sussex 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 resu ...

glass. As the process was labour-intensive, and expensive, blown plate was mainly used for carriages and

mirror A mirror or looking glass is an object that reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror will show an image of whatever is in front of it, when focused through the lens of the eye or a camera. Mirrors reverse the direction of the im ...

s rather than in

window A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent mat ...

s for buildings. Other methods for making hand-blown glass included:

, crown glass,

polished plate Polished plate is a type of hand-made 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 la ...

and

cylinder blown sheet 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 marked the move away from hand-blown to machine manufactured glass such as rolled plate,

machine drawn cylinder sheet Machine drawn cylinder sheet was the first mechanical method for "drawing" window glass. Cylinders of glass 40 feet (12 m) high are drawn vertically from a circular tank. The glass is then annealed and cut into 7 to 10 foot (2 to 3 ...

, flat drawn sheet, single and twin ground polished plate and float glass.

References

Glass production Glass types {{glass-engineering-stub