2-889-588 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

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.