43,500,000 Pieces A Year

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31143, 20 August 1966, Page 13

43,500,000 Pieces A Year

Specially written for “The Press" by

DON GRADY)

pRACTICALLY everything that can ■ be made of glass, except windowB glass, is made by Crown Crystal Glass, at Hornby. The glasses used in pubs, the bottles in which our milk is delivered, and the lampshades that decorate our homes, are made there.

From nothing in 1900. to a taff of 640 today, is the re- 1 ord of this glass-making lant It is the only one in the outh Island. Last year the factory made 3,500.000 pieces here, rangig from bottles, drinking lasses. tableware. salad owls, and vases to cream igs. Until recently, Crown Crysil. at Hornby, has concern ated on being the sole manuicturer of most items for the ew Zealand market with the tception of bottles, which are so made in Auckland. Today, the Hornby plant isj rning its eyes towards a dening export market forj ; products. Table glassware, drinking assware and general house>ld domestic glassware have ready been exported to mioa and Fiji.

glass into thousands of differ-; ent shapes. They make all light fittings,; as well as a decorative range of free-form ornamental glassware. comparable to the best Scandinavian. Italian and Continental standards. A free-form vase, produced' at a temperature of about 2670 degrees F.. takes from; five to 10 minutes to blow.! They retail at several pounds) apiece. The three main raw mater-! ials used in the manufacture of glass are silicate sand, soda ash and lime. Mt. Somers Sand Crown Crystal Glass has its; own sand quarry at Mount| Somers, and the sand is; the factory at Hornby.

I Crystal are kept fired 24 hours a day, and are producing molten glass all the time. One of the most remarkable things about the history of glass is that till modern times there has been very little change in the raw materials which are fused together to make it. Combination Glass made by the Romans 1900 years ago, contains almost the same raw materials in the same proportions as [today’s soda-lime glass. The majority of nand-blown glassware produced by Crown Glass is decorated by highly-skilled decorators. The designs on the glassware are .painted on with a brush by hand, using many coloured paints. Lighting glass made at

Hornby is a combination of ■ two glasses—flint-glass and opal. The opal is melted in one furnace, the flint in another. The opal glass is then ( coated with flint-glass on the i outside, much like a toffee apple. 1 The double coating, is but [a single example, of how engineers at Hornby, by modern glass technology, are able to develop products for * both the New Zealand and 1 overseas markets. 1 In this particular instance, the double coating is to en1 sure proper light distribution. 1 But often double-glass coat- ’ ings, are used in decorative ! glassware to enhance their ' ornamental value. I The picture shows a decorator working on a t jug.