Title

Manufacture of Glass for "The Crystal Palace"...Birmingham, 1850. Creator: S Read.

Caption

Manufacture of Glass for "The Crystal Palace", at Messrs. Chance's Works, Spon-Lane, near Birmingham, 1850. Workers making an '...immense quantity of plate glass required for the "Crystal" Palace...[it is] blown into a spherical form [and] swung in the manner represented, above the head and below the feet of the workman, until it assumes the form of a cylinder. The workman stands upon a stage opposite the month of the furnace, with a pit or well beneath his feet...He swings and balances the molten metal - firmly affixed to a knob of glass at the end of a long iron bar, or blowing tube - until it gradually expands...The slightest miscalculation of his power of swinging it, or deviation from the proper course, might dash the hot glass either against the side or end of the pit or well, or against the wall of the furnace - or, worse than all, against the body of a fellow workman or of a spectator'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.

Credit line

Photo12/Heritage Images/The Print Collector

Reference

HRM22A36_430

Model release

NA

Property release

NA

License type

Rights managed

Available size

46,0Mb (5,2Mb) / 16,5in x 10,8in / 4960 x 3243 (300dpi)

Keywords

building glass people male event work job technology man men swinging manufacturing worker skill danger trade guy dangerous occupation British heat factory palace manufacture Victorian century Britain profession newspapers press concept exhibition crystal palace B&W furnace glass works engraved engraving peril 19th century black & white black and white B W glassblower glassblowers glassblowing nineteenth century workers The Print Collector cultural event glass maker glass manufacture glass-blowing glassworks Great Exhibition 1851 Illustrated London News plate glass ILN newspaper glassmaker S Read Sir Joseph Paxton Paxton Joseph Paxton Read S Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations glass factory Joseph Sir Joseph 19th-century Great Exhibition of 1851