Winterfell, the castle, questions about

[Universal Sword Donor]

On 8/14/2019 at 10:27 AM, Seams said:

Thank you for so graciously backing down from your initial "basically makes no sense" assertion and your subsequent "moot" ramblings with non-evidence that had nothing to do with the books. I am glad that my book-based examples persuaded you to trust the author's intentions. As you say, "GRRM can make his greenhouses work however he wants," which was the point you originally disputed. Thinking and learning isn't so hard, if you put your mind to it!

Pungent and missing the point as ever. I asked if there was evidence to backup the greenhouse roof being made of diamond shaped glass, which you didn’t provide, and I had to find by looking at the chapter. You showed examples of windows.

 

 

[Yaya]

thanks for the thoughts and ideas.

another thought (i can't get the quote - it was a Bran chapter) regarding the glass gardens is that they must have been rather large to support a blackberry bush.

also, in a Jon chapter he muses about buying glass to make a glass gardens for the watch, and he (again, i can't search it out at this time) - if i remember correctly - indicates he would have to order glass from Myr.  ( i will check into that when i can) ... could that be that there isn't any glass making in Westeros?

[White Ravens]

4 hours ago, Yaya said:

thanks for the thoughts and ideas.

another thought (i can't get the quote - it was a Bran chapter) regarding the glass gardens is that they must have been rather large to support a blackberry bush.

also, in a Jon chapter he muses about buying glass to make a glass gardens for the watch, and he (again, i can't search it out at this time) - if i remember correctly - indicates he would have to order glass from Myr.  ( i will check into that when i can) ... could that be that there isn't any glass making in Westeros?

 

Here you go...

 

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Jon VII

They rode the winch lift back to the ground. The wind was gusting, cold as the breath of the ice dragon in the tales Old Nan had told when Jon was a boy. The heavy cage was swaying. From time to time it scraped against the Wall, starting small crystalline showers of ice that sparkled in the sunlight as they fell, like shards of broken glass.

Glass, Jon mused, might be of use here. Castle Black needs its own glass gardens, like the ones at Winterfell. We could grow vegetables even in the deep of winter. The best glass came from Myr, but a good clear pane was worth its weight in spice, and green and yellow glass would not work as well. What we need is gold. With enough coin, we could buy 'prentice glassblowers and glaziers in Myr, bring them north, offer them their freedom for teaching their art to some of our recruits. That would be the way to go about it. If we had the gold. Which we do not.

 

Jon is speculating about the resources it would require to build a glass garden at the Wall.  The temperatures needed to blow glass with wood fired furnaces led to deforestation in parts of medieval Europe. The glass gardens were made up of many diamond shaped panes because large sheets of glass were too difficult and costly to produce using old glassblowing techniques. 

It is interesting that Jon recognizes that good clear glass would be preferred and yet the ruined glass panes at Winterfell are described as green and yellow.