Glass Message Board
Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass => Topic started by: flying free on April 06, 2016, 06:42:57 PM
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I remembered reading something about this on the board and think I found at least one of the discussions here
http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,24901.msg138402.html#msg138402
although I remembered reading another thread about antique glass being made in ? (maybe East Anglia?). There was some discussion about sand I
thought on that?
Anyway I came across this piece in a book written in 1852 Dodd, The Curiosities of Industry and the Applied Sciences.
On page 9 of that edition it says (please excuse the typos, I cut and pasted from the only edition that let me cut and paste and so the typos are those that appear in that online form):
'If we take, for instance, Mr. Apsley Pellatt's very interesting group of glass materials at the Exliibition, we find tlie silex in the fonns of washed and burnt sand, the alkali in the form of carbonate of potash, and the oxides of lead and manganese; and three such series " silex, alkali, and oxides " would similarly have been seen in an earlier collection. It is in tlie minor details of each series tliat improvements have been and are now being sought. For instance. How can silex be obtained in greatest purity? is a question important to the glass-maker. Sand is, next to flint, tlie most familiar fonn in which silex is presented to us. Sand from Lynn, from St. Helen's, from Leighton Buzzard, and from many other places, is employed by glass makers; Isle of Wight sand is almost pure silex ; sand lately brought from Wenham Lake (the remarkable ice depot) has been found equally pure; and stmd from Australia has been sho^vii to be so peculiarly Avell fitted for the production of the finest glass, that it has been deemed commercially advantageous to freight vessels witli this substance alone. Flints and hard rocks, supposed to be rich in siliceous matter, have been tried in a groimd state; but no foim of silica has been found suitable except that which is in sandy particles.
But even here we have a striking fact. An English vessel, free to cany any cargo which presents itself, brings common sea-sand a distance of sixteen thousand miles from Australia to England, in order that the glass-maker may have a fitting siliceous material for his manufacture; and we may be quite certain that this would not be done unless the manufacturers were willing to pay an adequate price for this humble import.'
Quite astonishing that it might have been shipped from Australia!
edited to add - equally astonishing is the mention of Wenham Lake as a 'recent' source of sand as Wikipedia says this of Wenham Lake:
'Wenham Lake (224 acres) is a lake located in Wenham and Beverly, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. In the 19th century the lake was famous for its ice, harvested and transported by ship throughout the world. It was reputed to be Queen Victoria's favorite.'
I'm shocked that anyone could think of transporting 'ice', or sand even for that matter.
m
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It's not that surprising really because we would have been exporting huge quantities of stuff to the "colonies" yet there might not have been such huge quantities of stuff to bring back. Sand could also be used as saleable ballast
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M. have you found this title? https://archive.org/details/glassmanufactur00fettgoog (https://archive.org/details/glassmanufactur00fettgoog)
Topographic and Geologic Survey of Pennsylvania
Richard R Hice, State Geologist
Report No. XII
Glass Manufacture and the Glass Sand Industry of Pennsylvania
by Charles Reinhard Fettke, Ph.D.,
Harrisburg, P.A.
J.L.L. Kuhn, Printer to the Commonwealth
1919
It might add a bit more info for you. I've not read it yet but I had a quick browse through the Contents...
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ooh my word Anne. No, I just happened upon that sand mention and thought I'd add it, as I remember there being a thread or two about it many moons ago.
But that one you've linked to ... at a quick glance that is waaaay over my head - I'm not sure I even understand any of it at a quick glance.
However it's an excellent reference should anyone need to work out how something is made (thinking opacifiers, which is in there and which I shall have a read of).
Thanks :)
Christine, yes, I didn't think of that. However it reads that even he was surprised that sand should be shipped from Australia and that it would only be worth it if the manufacturers were paying the price for it. I'd just not read anywhere else that anyone was using sand from Australia. It's funny it's not mentioned somewhere in the costs of producing glass reports or things. Or perhaps it was, I just either haven't heard it mentioned or registered it if I have read it somewhere. (not that my reading has been that extensive :))
m
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http://www.unitednuclear.com/puresand.htm
And to think the Venetians used crushed pebbles for Cristallo and sands from Syria for vitrum blancum...
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the Victorians viewed commerce without sentiment - think of all the seagull poo from South America that made an empire for the Gibbs family........... they probably thought a carbon footprint was an archeological left over from a dinosaur's morning walk.
There seems to have been a real shuffling of raw materials in the C19 - the quantities of glass exported from Ireland to the States is mind blowing - and all made with sand that originated elsewhere.
there's quite an interesting note here re the Fontainebleau glass sand - considered to be one of the most high quality sources in the world......
http://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2010/02/two-museums-and-the-fontainebleau-glass-sand.html
presumably there must be a benefit to using flints as opposed to sand - all that crushing and time spent breaking them up.......... perhaps they melt at a lower temperature than sand.
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Pebbles are pure silica, no pollutants there.
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ah, yes, good point........... I hadn't thought of that.