Blown plate is a 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 ...

. There is a record of blown plate being produced in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

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 used for

carriage A carriage is a two- or four-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle for passengers. In Europe they were a common mode of transport for the wealthy during the Roman Empire, and then again from around 1600 until they were replaced by the motor car around 1 ...

s and

mirror A mirror, also known as a looking glass, is an object that Reflection (physics), reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror forms an image of whatever is in front of it, which is then focused through the lens of the eye or a camera ...

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 ma ...

s for buildings. Other methods for making hand-blown glass included: broad sheet, crown glass,

polished plate Polished plate is a type of hand-made glass. It is produced by casting glass onto a table and 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 c ...

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 shape by a glass blower. The en ...

. 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 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 ...

References

Glass production Glass types {{glass-engineering-stub