Peculiar Panes

The window panes in several of old #Charleston’s most #historic buildings feature an odd look that seems as though someone shot them with a BB gun. In fact, what this curious circles in the glass represent are the skills of the artisans who made these panes by hand. Before the industrial revolution made glass-making a mechanized procedure, window were typically made of what became known as Crown glass. The term comes from the molten glass that was created in kilns with a raised edge, or crown. The still-molten glass was attached as it cooled to a long pole, or pontil, and spun so that the centrifugal force would spread it into plates that were made into window panes. The attached section, was called the bullseye because of the large ripples created by the spinning, and was often cut out and thrown away. But it became fashionable to add the bullseye as one of the panes to show the skill of the artisan who made the glass. <img.src=”Charleston Curiosities” alt=”Bullseye window pane”

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