Pages

Monday, September 30, 2019

A Deeper Accomplishment

From Antonio Neri, "Treasure of the World"
MS Ferguson 67, f. 22r.
For the past four centuries, Antonio Neri has been best known as the author of L'Arte Vetraria, the first printed book solely devoted to the art of glass formulation (1612). It is a work committed to the subject of refining raw materials and combining them into a range of glasses, over a rainbow of colors. 'First into print' is a notable distinction, but one that Neri surpasses with ease by a deeper accomplishment. His book provides a rare glimpse of skilled practical knowledge. This was an era when prized techniques were frequently lost to subsequent generations; lost because artisans so often spared the pen. Their precious knowledge went purposely unrecorded, passing in strict confidence from master to apprentice working side by side. Neri preserved the old techniques of glass formulation like no other document has.

That 'first into print' is what we remember him for highlights an age-old problem that dogs historians. It is a simplification that puts a convenient handle on Neri, but at the same time, it de-emphasizes the fact that he was not working alone. It plays into a narrative that history, in general, happens in a parade of discrete jumps due to the brilliant discoveries of individuals working in isolation. This is reinforced by the mythology surrounding Neri – that he was a mysterious lone alchemist, wandering around Europe, evading those who would steal the secret of the philosopher’s stone. A similar narrative is applied to one historical figure after another, a form that is so appealing that it fills many history books of our schoolchildren and dictates the story lines of popular media productions (of a certain ilk) about the history of science and technology.

This is not to deny the limelight to anyone. Neri is a comparatively minor contributor and in my humble opinion definitely deserves recognition and even celebration. The danger is that by reducing history to a list of lone individuals making breakthrough discoveries, we distort the truth of how things are done and more to the point; we miss out on the far richer adventure of what really happens.

Never mind that Neri's book chronicles the work of hundreds or thousands of glassmakers that came before him or that he probably would have been far more grateful to be remembered for his work in alchemy and medicine. What sticks is 'first into print.' The reality is that he had the substantial resources of the Renaissance Medici court at his disposal. There is strong evidence based on his own manuscripts and drawings that he worked among a group of at least a dozen colleagues of both sexes, exchanging ideas, experimenting and urging each other on; a mode that no scientist would deny is far closer to the way discovery and innovation really happen.

This cultural defect in our perception of history is by no means a recent development. Even in Neri's own time, the early seventeenth century, the 'lone man' paradigm was well established. He and his contemporaries thought along similar lines about alchemists Arnold Villanova, Ramon Llull and Paracelsus. likewise for physicians that his father idolized like Galen and Dioscorides.

For the first time in history, we each have a tremendous chunk of the past at our fingertips in the form of the internet. It is a golden opportunity, not to be fed history, but to discover it for yourself and perhaps for the rest of us. There is no shortage of connections yet to be made and libraries around the world are availing their treasures freely to anyone with an interest. For a great adventure and an exercise in critical thinking, pick a discovery attributed to your favorite figure in history and ask the question "on whose shoulders was she standing?"



*This post first appeared here on 21 March 2014.

Friday, September 27, 2019

Sonnet for a Barber


Possible portrait of Lodovico Domenichi,
British Museum, inventory #1867,1012.650
This is a post about a 16th century poet who was best friends with alchemist/glassmaker Antonio Neri's grandfather, Jacopo, and who may even be the inspiration for the glassmaker's middle name: Lodovico. Neri, born in 1576,  is remembered mostly for his book of glass recipes, L'Arte Vetraria, yet he considered himself first and foremost an alchemist. His father was the personal physician to the grand duke of Tuscany, and his grandfather was a barber surgeon, who probably lived in the family house until his death in 1594, when Antonio was an 18-year-old. There can be little question that our glassmaker/alchemist was steeped in chemistry and medicine from a very early age, but perhaps also literature. 

In November of 1554, poet Lodovico Domenichi wrote a sonnet to his friend, Jacopo Neri. Jacopo was from Dicomano in the upper Arno River valley, then living in Florence with his young family. Domenichi was serving a sentence of house arrest in a wretched paper mill in Pescia, in the hills north of Florence. He had been found guilty by the inquisition on charges of translating the heretical writing of John Calvin into vernacular Italian, a crime for which the poet could have easily been executed. Luckily, he had friends in high places and after some nervous time spent in the stockade in Pisa, his sentence was reduced and later commuted by Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici.

Jacopo Neri had taken ill with a grave infirmity and when word reached Domenichi, he took pen to paper and composed seventy stanzas in the style of Petrarch. In so doing he bestowed a precious gift, the only one he could under the circumstances; he immortalized his good friend on paper. The sonnet starts:

      As I have now come to understand your
      Perilous illness and health,
      It is both grief and fondness that I show

      So may merciful God help you,
      Without delay, lest this vile world lose
      So much goodness in you, so much virtue.

In the sonnet, he goes on to extol Jacopo's kindness towards patients, his willingness to forgive and his admiration among scholars. Along the way, Domenichi describes his own predicament; the cruelties of the mill workers, the muddy floors, his desire to flee and trying to sleep on a bed of frozen straw among the work animals. The rain has been falling for weeks and he is miserable. Recalling happier times he evokes the memories of many mutual friends, including a dwarf named Don Gabriello Franceschi, who delivered sermons at the Cestello church, Neri's family church, located a few hundred feet from his front door. Franceschi was from the family into which Jacopo's daughter, Faustina, would later marry. 

      There he is called Don Gabriello 
      Franceschi and I am honored, for good reason,
      A giant of men in a small handsome package.

He goes on to describe his saviors; the men who intervened with the Church on his behalf. One was Pompeo della Barba, educated at Pisa and later called to Rome as the personal physician to Pope Pius IV. In the end, Domenichi was pardoned, allowed to leave the damp mill and return to Florence. Within a short time, he was appointed court historian to Cosimo I. Over his career, he published many volumes; translations of works ranging from Xenophon, to Plutarch, to Pliny's Natural History, to a groundbreaking compilation of poems by contemporary women. At the end of his life, Domenichi suffered devastating debilitation, maybe from a stroke, which robbed him of the ability to speak. Even so, he still received regular visits from his old friend Jacopo Neri the barber surgeon. As we turn away from the subject of Lodovico Domenichi, it is hard to resist speculating that a decade after his death, the poet was remembered with fondness by the Neri family in the christening of our glassmaker, whose full name is Antonio Lodovico Neri.

Lodovico Domenichi, "A Mastro Jacopo di Neri, Cerusico, E Barbiere." in Il Secondo libro dell' Opere Burlesche, di M. Francesco Berni.  (Fiorenza: Apresso li Heredi di Bernardo Giunti, 1555), vv. 2. Reprinted many times. 
*This post first appeared 9 September 2013.

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Vitrum Flexile [Flexible Glass]

Roman Emperor Tiberius - Glass paste cameo
 c 20ACE by "Herophilos, Son of Dioskurides"
In the first century CE, references appear in the literature for a malleable form of glass --that is to say flexible-- the method for which is reported as lost. This 'vitrum flexile' was a material that supposedly could be worked with a hammer like metal; not brittle but plastic, yet retaining the other favorable properties of glass. In the ancient world, historians Strabo (c. 63 BCE–24 CE), Pliny (c. 23–79 CE), Petronius (c. 27–66 CE) and others recount the story of a hapless artisan who brought his great discovery to Roman emperor Tiberius. Fearing the devaluation of his wealth, the emperor had the glassmaker executed on the spot and his workshop destroyed. The implication being that the inestimable value of a malleable glass would crash the markets for gold and silver. [1]

Since then, the legend has resurfaced in various forms, notably at periods in history of technological upheaval; times when innovative knowledge threatened to 'disrupt' the established order. One incarnation has the sophy of Persia gifting a set of malleable drinking glasses to the king of Spain, Philip III, around 1610. Just then, new trade deals with the Middle East rattled the European economy and Venetian glass craftsmen fanned out through Europe, disrupting local glass furnaces and guilds with their superior techniques. [2] Another version tells of a French sculptor bringing his malleable glass-work to Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642), of Dumas' Three Musketeers fame. According to the story, that particular artisan’s reward was life in prison. The tale takes place in a tumultuous political period in French history and appears in print at the dawn of the so-called industrial revolution. [3]

Chronologically, this last story aligns nicely with the publication, in southern France, of a Latin book of alchemical recipes by royal physician Pierre-Jean Fabre (1588-1658). Contained in his volume is a prescription for a malleable form of glass, presumably the fabled vitrum flexile. Fabre's book was titled Palladium Spagyricum, 1624. [4] Spagyricum is a reference to spagyrics, the specific brand of chemistry practiced by sixteenth century alchemist-physician Paracelsus. Palladium translates to 'protector' or 'savior'. As an aside, it is interesting to note that Fabre developed an elaborate philosophy which integrated chemistry as a 'sacrament' to Catholic theology, but that is a story for another day.

In 1685, Fabre's recipes were nicely translated into English and tucked into the end of a book otherwise devoted to the art of drawing, by William Salmon [5]. Here is the full recipe "To Make Malleable Glass" as rendered in Salmon's book:

I.        Take oyl of Luna, twenty drachms: oyl of Mercury, or its water seven times rectified, one pound: mix them together and distill them.
II.      Repeat this distillation till the oleum Lunae rises with the water of Mercury in distillation. 
III.     Distill this water again until it is fixed, and converted into a fixed oyl, and this repeat four times. 
IV.     In the fourth time the oyl of Luna is fixed with the oyl of Mercury, so that they render glass malleable; for so great is the viscosity in your oyls, that it removes the brittleness of the glass, and so leaves it of a malleable temper. 
V.      The reason is, because that the radical moisture of the glass is multiplied by the radical moisture of the metals. Which is plentiful and turgent or swelling in the oyls of Luna and Mercury. 
VI.     And if [in] this oyl made volatile, diamonds should be dissolved, and then digested into a fixt oyl, it would transmute all glass into diamonds, only by projecting this oyl onto melted glass. 
VII.   There are also other precious stones comprehended within this oyl, when it is made volatile, and digested, and fixed again by digestion continually for the space of a year. 
VIII.  Also this oyl can turn glass into precious stones of any kind whatsoever, if therein (being made volatile) precious stones of the same kind have been dissolved, and digested with it into a fixed oyl. 
IX.     For as metals are included in their fixed oyls: so are precious stones in theirs, as Raymundus Lullius doth witness in many places; the which thing we shall teach you in the following chapter. 
 Elsewhere in the book, it is explained that 'oyl of Luna' is silver dissolved in acid, and 'oyl of Mercury' is a sublimation of mercury and saltpeter. [6] From a purely technical standpoint, the formula would have been regarded credible by 17th century and earlier practitioners in that both mercury and silver were successfully used as additives to glass and they do integrate into the matrix. Notably, Antonio Neri used both of them in his chalcedony glass. In Neri's case he was using these metals to produce color, although he does not attribute specific tints to the ingredients. Under some circumstances, silver is known to produce an attractive blue. It should also be noted that Renaissance glassmakers used similar silver-mercury formulas to produce the reflective layer on finished glass mirrors, in a process that resembled gilding. They formed what was known as "mercury glass." It is not beyond the pale to speculate that experiments would have been conducted by alchemists to add such concoctions directly to the glass melt. In the end, though, there is no indication that these additives would produce a malleable glass. Last, we should note that prolonged exposure to mercury vapor causes irreversable neurological and organ damage. It undoubetly contributed to the demise of alchemists, gilders, milliners and many others who worked with it throughout history. 

As far as I am aware, this is the first example of a specific recipe for malleable glass uncovered in the literature. If nothing else, it is an important marker for further research into the history of glassmaking.


[1] Strabo: Geography, v. 8; Pliny: Naturalis Historia XXXVI.lxvi.195; Petronius: Satyricon 50.7; Also recounted by Casius Dio (c.150–235 CE): Historia Romana 57.21.7; Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636 CE): Etymologiae XVI.16.6, ‘De vitro’; Suetonius; Ibn Abd Alhokin; John of Sailsbury.
[2] Knolles, Grimstone, Johnson: Richard Knolles' The General Historie of the Turkes (London: Adam Islip, 1621).
[3] Neri 1697 (Introduction). A French translation of Florentine glassmaker Antonio Neri’s 1612 book L’Arte Vetraria [The art of making glass] by Jean Haudicquer de Blancourt. Also see my earlier post here http://www.conciatore.org/2014/07/flexible-glass-reprise.html .
[4] Pierre-Jean Fabre: Palladium spagyricum Petri Ioannis Fabri doctoris medici Monspeliensis ... (Toulouse: Bosc, 1624), p. 276. Later translated into several English editions, see note [5].
[5] William Salmon: Polygraphice: Or the Arts of Drawing, Engraving, Etching, Limming, Painting … (London: T. Passenger & T. Sawbridge, 1685), pp. 598, 599.
[6] To more adventurous readers: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, or anywhere else, ever. Vaporized mercury is a powerful neurotoxin. Small amounts can cause permanent brain damage and multiple organ failure. Furthermore, this recipe uses powerful acids and nitrates, which are extremely dangerous even in a controlled laboratory setting. Even if you have little regard for your own health and safety, consider those around you; this includes loved ones, family, children, pets, neighbors and the emergency workers who will inevitably be left to clean up your mess.

Monday, September 23, 2019

The Glass of Montpellier

Montpellier, France, in the seventeenth century.
(Attribution unknown)
Montpellier is an old city in southern France. It stands about halfway between Marseille and the Spanish border along the Mediterranean Sea (strategically located slightly inland to avoid pirates). First documented in the tenth century, it is one of very few French cities that developed without the influence of ancient Roman occupation; it is a pure product of the local region. It became a center of intellectual learning and attracted students from throughout Europe. Around it sprung a number of supporting arts not the least of which was glassmaking. Once famous for its fine glassware, today this centuries long heritage is all but forgotten, yet when we dig into the literature, we find a surprise connection to one of the oldest legends in the history of glass.

Since before the Renaissance, Montpellier was an established center for medical and legal education, a strong tradition that continues at the university there; today, it houses the oldest running medical school in the world. This prestigious institution "was founded perhaps by people trained in the Spanish medical schools; it is certain that, as early as 1137, there were excellent physicians at Montpellier University." [1] In 1529, Nostradamus entered to study for a doctorate in medicine, but shortly thereafter, he was expelled when it was discovered that he previously worked as an apothecary; a 'manual' skill that was banned by the school's rules of conduct.

Paradoxically, these impugned 'manual' arts account for some the region's more intriguing activity. Along with medicine, the area became known for the production of paint pigments, for glassmaking and finally for the practice of alchemy. All of these turn out to be closely related to each other, but perhaps not obviously so. Throughout the Renaissance, apothecaries were responsible for a wide range of distillations and extracts used by physicians to treat disease. They were also the de facto suppliers of pigments and other fine art supplies and even sourced some of the materials for glassmaking. Glassmakers often relied on painters to embellish their products, painters used ground glass in their pigments and apothecaries needed glassmakers to produce the flasks, beakers and other alchemical equipment required for their profession.

An anonymous Montpellier manuscript of the fourteenth century, called the Liber diversarum arcium [Book of Various Arts], offers us one of the most complete guides to the production of pigments to have survived from that period. [2] Another, later writing of the sixteenth century offers an extensive collection of glassmaking recipies brought to Montpellier from Venice. This one is titled Recette per fare vetri colorati et smalti d’ogni sorte havute in Murano 1536 [Recipes to make colored glasses and enamels of every kind as in Murano, 1536]. [3]

Local history points to the town of Claret just north of Montpellier as the seat of regional glassmaking. Beginning in 1290, the oak forests on the Causse de l'Orthus attracted glassmakers and their families. "So maybe the oaks got used for fuel. (A 'causse' is a geological term for a limestone plateau.) [also a material of glassmaking] At any rate, the glassmakers were ennobled by the King and formed a guild of premium glassmakers whose wares were sold all over Europe from the market at Sommières." [4]

In the early seventeenth century, Pierre-Jean Fabre (1588-1658) studied medicine at Montpellier where he discovered the works of Paracelsus, to which he became a devotee. [5] After securing a medical degree, he returned to the nearby town of his birth, Castelnaudary, to work as a doctor. Eventually, he was awarded the status of "Royal Physician" by Louis XIII, probably for his work on treating victims of the plague with chemical preparations. [6]

Fabre's first book, of a total canon numbering sixteen volumes, was on the subject of alchemy and medicine titled "Palladium spagyricum" 1624. [7] The book, written in Latin, contains advice on the transmutation of metals, turning water into "good wine" and elixirs to cure all disease. It contains one recipe that is of particular interest on the subject of glassmaking; a malleable form of glass, known in legend since the Roman Empire as Vitrum Flexile.

See my next post to take a closer look at Fabre's specific recipe for a glass that is malleable at room temperature and trace a bit of the legend's history.

[1] Wikipedia, “University of Montpellier” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Montpellier.
[2] Mark Clarke: Mediaeval Painters' Materials and Techniques: The Montpellier Liber diversarum arcium (London: Archetype Publications, 2011).
[3] Montpellier 1536, MS. H. 486: Recette per fare vetri colorati et smalti d’ogni sorte havute in Murano 1536, Bibliothèque de l'Ecole de Médecine de Montpellier, see also Zecchin 1987, v.1 p 247-276. Although the manuscript is dated 1536 it is probably copied from much earlier Venetian sources.
 [4] Ed Ward, Blog: City on a Hill, 1 Nov. 2010 post “Where the Glass-Blowers Were.” http://wardinfrance.blogspot.com/2010/11/where-glass-blowers-were.html . Also see Halle du Verre regional glass museum website http://www.cc-grandpicsaintloup.fr/-Halle-du-verre-.html .
[5] Paracelsus (1493-1541) was a Swiss born physician and alchemist who looked to nature rather than ancient texts for remedies to disease. He was widely condemned durring his lifetime but became very popular after his manuscripts were printed in the late sixteenth century.
[6] The definitive reference on Fabre is Bernard Joly: La rationalité de l'alchimie au XVIIe siècle (France: Vrin, 1992), pp. 35-50. A good English treatment can be found in Allen George Debus: The French Paracelsians: The Chemical Challenge to Medical and Scientific Tradition in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) pp, 75, 76.
[7] Pierre-Jean Fabre: Palladium spagyricum Petri Ioannis Fabri doctoris medici Monspeliensis ... (Toulouse: Bosc, 1624), p. 276. Later translated into several English editions, notably by William Salmon: Polygraphice: Or the Arts of Drawing, Engraving, Etching, Limming, Painting … (London: T. Passenger & T. Sawbridge, 1685), pp. 598, 599.

Friday, September 20, 2019

Alchemist's Assistant

Spine of volume 3 of Della Casa's notebooks,
Biblioteca Nationale Centrale Firenze.
At the turn of the seventeenth century, when Priest Antonio Neri was employed in Florence by the Medici prince Don Antonio, he worked closely with another alchemist by the name of Agnolo della Casa. Casa chronicled Neri's work and after his colleague's death in 1614, he undertook a special mission for Don Antonio to interview Neri's other associates and uncover the priest's recipe for the philosopher's stone. Don Antonio went as far as consulting a medium in Venice to contact Neri in the afterlife, but that is a story for another time. 

Thousands of pages of notes relating to Antonio Neri's work in Florence were recorded by fellow alchemist Agnolo della Casa. A significant portion of this nineteen-volume manuscript is devoted to Neri's work on transmutation and specifically on the fabled philosopher's stone. The trouble is that he wrote much of it in obscure language, which renders it among the most cryptic in the entire canon of alchemy. Other sections of Della Casa's notebooks contain copies of the works of various adepts including Geber, Ramon Llull and Arnold Villanova. Neri took a keen interest in all of them.

In 1597, Prince Don Antonio de' Medici occupied the dormant Casino di San Marco and made it his new home. His father, the former grand duke, built this combination palace and laboratory on the north side of the city to indulge his own fascination with natural secrets. Don Antonio began to assemble a team that included Neri and Della Casa. The three men were all about the same age, in their early twenties, ready to do great things; ready to reveal nature and change the world.

In their time, it was reasonable to think that one metal could be 'purified' into another and that a single medicine could cure all disease or counteract any poison. These notions had been around since ancient times. In this realm, a skeptical eye was an absolute necessity, but there was no specific evidence that disproved the old stories. Don Antonio reportedly spent a fortune collecting recipes and testing them; he and his men worked to separate the real from the bogus. Swindlers and con men were in plentiful supply; they hawked miracle cures in public squares throughout Europe. Without a firm grasp of the underlying chemistry, the task of understanding a particular compound or chemical reaction could be quite difficult. Even to experienced, careful researchers, there was no guarantee that conclusions were correct.

Don Antonio was convinced that the glassmaking priest had indeed discovered the secret of transmutation. He put Della Casa to work interviewing Neri's acquaintances to see what could be learned. An expert gold refiner, Guido Antonio Milani, reported to Della Casa that in July 1596, Neri had performed before his eyes a transmutation of base metal into "twenty-four carat" gold. He said he pressed the 20-year-old, who in reluctance, confided that he had learned the secret from a German, who performed the gold transmutation with a "tablet of medicine." The German told Neri the medicine was nothing but the simple quintessence of green vitriol and the method to produce it was described by Paracelsus.

* This post first appeared here in a shorter form on 2 Sept 2013.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Artificial Gems

Pastes (glass) set in silver openwork (Portugal c. 1750)
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Acq. nr. M.68-1962
In many ways, the story of artificial gems traces the story of glass technology itself. From ancient times, when glass could only be produced in very small quantities it was regarded and used as a type of stone that was made through art. Alchemists thought the bright colors produced by metallic pigments in glass were a key to the philosopher's stone, and the transmutation of base metals into gold. As the technical prowess of glassmakers expanded, so did the ability to simulate specific stones, most notably coveted gems. Glass went on to be used as material for utilitarian objects like goblets and as an indispensable part of scientific enquiry. All the while, artificial gems have continued to dazzle us with their beauty. 

In the fifth part of Antonio Neri's 1612 book, he teaches the secrets of making artificial gems "of so much grace, and beauty, that they will surpass the natural stones in everything except hardness." It is not a difficult argument to make that this section alone is responsible for much of the lasting popularity of L'Arte Vetraria. It is easy to see why enterprising artisans would want to make glass imitations that could pass for the real thing. It is also perhaps tempting to jump to the conclusion that Neri intended his recipes to be used in deception, but there is no evidence whatsoever that this was the case.

Neri gives full credit for his innovative methods in paste gems to Dutch alchemist Isaac Hollandus. Hollandus is an enigmatic figure, whose writings survive, but not much is known of the man, his family, or even if he was living in Neri's time. What is known is that Antonio's dear friend Emmanuel Ximenes was the brother-in-law to Baron Simon Rodriguez d'Evora, a famous diamond dealer and jeweler of choice to royalty throughout Europe. He lived and worked on the same street in Antwerp as Ximenes' palace, only a few steps away from Neri's new temporary home. It was a common request of wealthy patrons to have duplicate jewelry made in paste for travel and security reasons. If a fake necklace or jewel could pass for the real thing, it was well worth the added expense, when the genuine article could remain safe under lock and key.

No artificial gem recipes have ever been found among Hollandus' writings, excepting one for ruby which is then crushed up as part of a prescription for the philosopher's stone. It is quite possible that Neri was applying a more general technique from the Dutchman. The basic material for all of Neri's paste gems is a fine lead crystal. The crux of his innovation lay in the form of lead used. Normally, metallic lead sheet was cut into small pieces, and roasted in a kiln such that it would oxidize into powder, but not melt. The powder was then added to the glass melt. In Neri's method the lead was chemically converted into a water-soluble form, which could then be filtered and purified to a much greater extent. The end result was a far better grade of crystal.

In 1697, Jean Haudicquer de Blancourt translated into French and greatly expanded Christopher Merrett's English edition of Neri. Blancourt gave no credit to the Italian for his work, and two years later, when it was translated back into English by Daniel Brown, the connection to Neri was completely lost, but the credit for paste gems remained with Hollandus. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, numerous general encyclopedias of art and craft were published and the so-called 'Hollandus' paste gem recipes turned up many times. Meanwhile, a properly credited French version of L'Arte Vetraria was completed by Holbach in 1752. This edition was more suited to a scientific audience; he faithfully translated the Italian, but also incorporated the full comments of Merrett as well as those of Kunckel who issued his famous German version of Neri in 1679.

For more reading on Neri's artificial gems see Glass as Pasta and on the work of later investigators see Marieke Hendriksen at The Medicine Chest

Monday, September 16, 2019

Scraping the Barrel

4th century BCE philosopher Diogenes
(supposedly lived in a wine barrel)
by Gaetano Gandolfi (1792)
To seventeenth century glassmaker Antonio Neri, "tartar" was a well-known byproduct of the winemaking process. If we chill wine or grape juice to below 50 degrees (10 deg. C.) crystals of tartar start to form and once they do, then tend not to dissolve back, even at room temperatures. Today, these crystals are commonly found in a powdered form, in kitchen cupboards as "cream of tartar." Bakers and cooks use it to stabilize whipped egg whites, and it has a number of other applications. 

Neri used tartar in his glass to add sparkle, a trick known to Venetian glassmakers as early as the 1400s. It was obtained from the dregs at the bottom of wine barrels. To understand how this works, it is useful to know that Florentines, Venetians and most southern Europeans made glass from crushed up quartz pebbles or sand mixed with a specific flux known as "glass salt." This salt was rich in sodium carbonates, which greatly reduced the melting point of the quartz. It allowed artisans to work the material at the temperatures easily achieved in their furnaces. Tartar turns out to be very similar, except that it is rich in potassium rather than sodium. 

Potassium atoms are larger and heavier than sodium atoms and when light passes through a piece of potassium-fluxed glass, it bends and refracts more. This effect is not as pronounced as when adding the even heavier lead to form fine crystal, but it still adds noticeable sparkle to finished pieces. Using all tartar as a flux has the undesirable effect of reducing the workability of the hot glass. Outside the furnace, it becomes stiff quicker and artists have less time to create fancy shapes and forms. The solution to this dilemma is to use a mix of sodium and potassium fluxes together, which is exactly what Neri did. 

In his 1612 book L'Arte Vetraria, he shows how to prepare tartar and then adds it to a number of his glass recipes saying, "The tartar is the secret way to produce more salt and to make cristallo which is whiter and of rare beauty." Here is Neri’s prescription:


To make Purified Tartar Salt you should obtain tartar, which is also called gruma, from barrels of red wine in which it forms large lumps, however do not use powder. Roast it in earthenware pots amongst hot coals until it becomes calcined black and all its sliminess is roasted away. It then will begin to whiten, but do not let it become white, because if you do the salt will be no good.  
Calcine tartar this way: put it in large earthenware pans full of hot common water, or better yet in glazed earthenware pans then made to boil on a slow fire. You should do it in such a way that in two hours the level of the water will slowly decrease to one-quarter, at this point lift it from the fire and leave it to cool and to clarify. Now decant off the liquid, which will be strong lye and refill the pans containing the remains of the tartar with new common water. In the way stated above, boil as before and repeat the procedure until saltiness no longer charges the water. 
At this point, the [decanted] water is impregnated with all the salt. Filter the lye clear and put it in glass chamber pots to evaporate in the ash of the stove over a slow fire. In the bottom, white salt will remain. Dissolve this salt in new hot common water and leave it in the pans, letting it settle for two days. Then filter it and return it to chamber pots to evaporate over a slow fire. In the bottom, a much whiter salt will be left than the previous time. Now dissolve this salt in fresh hot common water and leave it to settle for two days. Evaporate, filter and repeat everything as before. Overall, repeat this procedure four times to dissolve, filter and evaporate the salt of tartar. This will make the salt whiter than snow and purified from the vast majority of its sediment.
When mixed with sifted polverino, or rocchetta, with its doses of tarso [quartz] or sand, this salt will make a frit that in crucibles will produce the most beautiful crystallino and common glass, which one cannot make without the accompaniment of tartar salt. Without it [tartar], good fine crystallino can be made, nevertheless with it, it will be the absolute most beautiful.

*This post first appeared here on 16 May 2014.

Friday, September 13, 2019

Pebbles from Pavia

A Bridge on the River Ticino, near Polleggio,
William Pars (1742‑1782).
In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, a type of glass known as 'cristallo' was the absolute pinnacle of the art. Its recipe was invented in Venice and guarded there as a state secret. Its name derived from the mineral it was designed to mimic: rock crystal. As clear as water, rock crystal was valued since ancient times for carving into cups, vessels and other objects of art. Today we know it as a form of quartz, but in Roman times it was thought to be a type of frozen or coagulated water.

In the early 1600s, when Antonio Neri started making glass in Florence, the grand duke's craftsmen were routinely carving this hard and brittle rock crystal into complex thin shapes, a process that took great skill and effort. Due to the expense involved in producing a piece, this art was the exclusive province of extremely wealthy individuals. Thus, objects made from rock crystal were considered markers of status. The recipe for cristallo glass was a very great secret indeed, but its real value lay in the specific materials used. Even if the recipe found its way out of Murano, which it inevitably did, the Venetian's tight trade network ensured a monopoly on many of the ingredients. It is said that even the furnace crucibles for cristallo were made from a specific clay gathered in Constantinople.

Cristallo was not only exceptionally clear, but for the artist it had working properties like no other glass. Thin, complex shapes were possible in cristallo that could never be duplicated in common glass. The secret for making cristallo came to Florence in the late 1560's, only a few years before the birth of Antonio Neri, who would learn the techniques and go on to publish the recipe for the first time anywhere.

 After protracted overtures, which involved diplomats, spies and the archbishop of Florence, Grand Duke Cosimo I managed to negotiate with the Venetian Doge and Senate for a Muranese master and two assistants to come to Florence and teach the way to make cristallo. It is likely that the raw materials were all purchased through the Venetians, at least initially. By the time Neri wrote his book, L'Arte Vetraria, in 1612, the Florentines were already finding alternate sources. In Venice, the ingredients of cristallo were prescribed and controlled by strict laws. The Florentines did not have this constraint and were free to experiment.

In the second recipe of Neri's book, he spills the beans on where the Venetians procured the single most important ingredient for cristallo, the pure quartz stones which account for the material's clarity. Notice in the following excerpt that Neri mistakenly thinks that the white river stones are a form of marble and also notice the alchemical language he uses to describe the process in which the stone is "transmuted" into glass.
When you want to a make cristallo that is beautiful and fully perfect, see that you have the very whitest tarso. At Murano they use pebbles from Ticino [Pavia], a stone abundant in the Ticino River. Tarso, then is a species of very white hard marble [quartz]. 
In Tuscany, it is found at the foot of Mount Veruca in Pisa, at Seravezza, at Massa near Carrara, and in the Arno River both above and below Florence. In other places as well, common stone is often recognized, which is seen to have the same qualities as tarso; it is very white and does not have dark veins, or the yellowish appearance of rust, but is spotless and pure. Take note that any stones that will spark with a piece of steel or strike plate, are apt to vitrify and will make glass and cristallo. All those stones that do not make sparks with a piece of steel or striker as above will never vitrify. This serves as advice for being able to distinguish stones that have the ability to transmute their form, from those that cannot be transmuted. 
Start with this same tarso, as fair and as white as possible. Grind it finely into powder in stone mortars. Do not use bronze or any other metal for this purpose or the stone will take in the color of the metal, which then would tinge the glass or cristallo, and make it imperfect. The pestle must be iron by necessity but at least the other materials will not have the possibility of causing any effect. Pulverize the tarso well and sift with a fine sieve. It is important that the tarso is ground as finely as flour, so that it will all pass through a fine sieve.
* This post first appeared here on 30 May 2014. 

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Zaffer

Antique Apothecary jars,
cobalt blue glass.
As best as I can remember, the first time that I really noticed glass was at four or five years old, at my grandmother's house in Queens, New York. The sunlight filtering through a low window caught my eye with a brilliant blue glint through a small cobalt glass bottle.  My grandmother held it up to the light for me and I was enchanted; transported into a realm of exquisite pure color.

Little did I know that the spell cast on me at such a young age had been cast on Egyptian pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty and on Persian princesses, two thousands years ago, by their cobalt glass jewelry. In all three cases, the deep rich blue of cobalt oxide glass was responsible. Today, the source of ancient Middle Eastern cobalt is unknown, possibly West Africa, but more recently, in the Renaissance; it was mined in Hungary, in Bohemia and in German Saxony, where it was called "zaffer," after its sapphire color.

Legend tells that sixteenth century silver miners in Germany amassed a hoard of smaltite thinking it was silver ore. When they tried to smelt it, the arsenic which cobalt ores always have, evolved highly toxic fumes that made them sick. Discouraged and maligned, they said the product of their labors was cursed by goblins; they named it "kobald" (cobalt) after the evil spirits. The theme of 'evil spirits' (toxic fumes) was common in mining circles. A mythology persisted from ancient times up until the eighteenth century that divided the spirits into two groups; mischievous, and malevolent. The mischievous spirits played tricks on the miner's perception and equipment, the malevolent spirits could stop a man dead in his tracks, literally. 

Regardless of the difficulties both terestrial and otherwise, a strong market developed for the newly found "kobald" among artists for paint, potters for glazes, and glassmakers. The Saxon miners gained a reputation for producing the finest zaffer.

In his glassmaking book L'Arte Vetraria, Antonio Neri describes his method for purifying and preparing zaffer for use in glass. It is a recipe that would stand the test of time, still quoted by authors into the nineteenth and twentieth century.

To Prepare Zaffer, Which Serves for Many Colors in the Art of Glassmaking

You should get zaffer in large pieces and put it in earthenware oven-pans holding it in the furnace chamber for half a day. Then put it into iron ladles to inflame it in the furnace. Heat it well, then take and sprinkle it with strong vinegar. When cold, grind it finely over a porphyry stone into glazed earthen pots with hot water. Then wash more water over it always leaving the zaffer to settle in the bottom.

Now gently decant, to carry away the sediment and impurities of the zaffer. The good part and pigment of the zaffer will remain in the bottom. The pigment remains are now prepared and purified to be far better than it was at first, which will make clear and limpid pigment. This zaffer should be dried and kept in sealed vessels for use, which will be much improved over the original.


Until the mid 1700s zaffer had been associated with silver and copper mines, and was commonly thought to be a derivative of copper. It was Swedish chemist Georg Brandt who finally isolated the new metal, and gave it the name which honors the miners and the subterranean spirits which still can cast a spell on us through its deep pure blue color in glass.

* This post first appeared here in a slightly different form on 4 April 2014.

Monday, September 9, 2019

Washing Molten Glass

Washing, sorting and carrying cullet
Denis Diderot 1772
One of the continuing frustrations with the study of glassmaker Antonio Neri, is that there is no known example of his glass to be found anywhere. It is very possible that pieces do survive, but so far, none has been tied to him or his recipes. At first it might seem to be a straightforward task of analyzing the composition of likely candidates and comparing the results to his formulas. Unfortunately, this plan does not hold water. Even if a recipe for glass was followed exactly, the result will have a different composition from the starting materials. One reason is that before the hot glass was crafted by artisans, a new batch was typically "washed" by flinging ladlefuls of molten glass into great vats of cold, clean water. In this process, excess flux is dissolved in the water and left behind. In his 1612 book L'Arte Vetraria Neri wrote:
After a while, when the glass is well fused, take it out of the crucibles and throw it into large earthenware pans or clean sturdy wooden tubs filled with fresh water. This step of throwing the glass into water has the effect of causing the water to remove a kind of salt called Alkali salt [glass gall], which ruins the cristallo and makes it dark and cloudy. So while it is still being worked let the glass spit out this salt, a substance quite foul, then return it to clean crucibles. Carry out this flinging into water repeatedly as necessary. In order to separate the cristallo from all its [alkali] salt, this should be repeated to the satisfaction of the furnace conciatore [glassmaker].
This step, he assures us, is absolutely necessary for the finest glass, but also helps improve the most common glass:
If you throw it into water at least one time, what you will have will be beautiful and clear. The same is true for common glass, which once brought to perfection you should return to the crucibles for use. It will be bright, fine and quite satisfactory to work in those jobs that require it. […] when a more than ordinary fine glass is desired it is necessary. Beyond becoming very white[clear], it calcines and clarifies nicely with few impurities.
This technique becomes even more critical for Neri's lead crystal, in fact, any glassmaker who ignored this step for a leaded glass did so at risk of a major disaster.
In a few hours everything will have clarified, now purify it by throwing it in water. Inspect the glass carefully before returning it to the crucible. All lead precipitating out of the glass must be removed with diligence, throwing it away, so that it does not make the bottom of the crucible break out, as can happen. Return the glass that was thrown in water to the crucible and leave it to clarify for a day.
In addition to washing the glass, sometimes the top layer of a melt was skimmed off and discarded because it contained contaminants that floated to the surface. To complicate matters further, molten glass can stratify in the crucible, meaning the composition might vary from top to bottom and from the center of the pot to the edges. 

Scientists and historians have collaborated to see what can be learned from period samples of glass. When attention is focused on the composition of a single type of glass, like Venetian style cristallo for example, one might expect a wide variation. The opposite turns out to be true. Even with all of these factors conspiring to change the glass composition, remarkably the analysis shows it is quite difficult to tell apart glass that was known to be made in Florence from that of Antwerp or Venice. Recent efforts have centered on identifying minuscule amounts of trace materials in the old glass that were unique to the raw ingredients of a specific region. Meanwhile, Antonio Neri's glass continues to elude us, even though it might be sitting on the shelves of museums around the world, right in front of our eyes.

* This post first appeared here on 9 May 2014.

Friday, September 6, 2019

Primordial Matter

16th century Mining practices, 
from Agricola, De Re Metallica
In the early seventeenth century, Florentine priest Antonio Neri wrote the first printed book devoted to formulating glass from raw materials. His work is called L'Arte Vetraria, which translates to "the art of glassmaking." The book became quite famous and this is what he is remembered for today, yet he considered himself first and foremost an alchemist. In previous posts, we have explored the commonalities between glassmaking, medicine and the apothecary's trade. Another field closely connected to alchemy was mining. 

In the seventeenth century, the earth was considered a living entity; metals were found to occur in "veins" which were thought to grow and once mined, regenerate over time. The metals themselves were thought to undergo a maturation process. Primordial material left over from the creation of the world exerted its influence deep in the ground. Nurtured by the earth, under the influence of the suns rays, a process took place that eventually turned base metals into the more noble silver and gold. As far as Neri was concerned, alchemy was the art of imitating and enhancing natural processes that were already at work. In his manuscript Discorso, he writes:
I feel that the more perfect the art the most simple it is; so the authors [of alchemy] most unanimously agree that the ‘primordial material’ [prima materia] of the [philosopher’s] stone is something vile [base] and not bought with money, but easy to find. Moreover, the manner of work must imitate nature, which in order to produce gold makes use of the singular or simple material, which is the seed of gold, of a single vessel, which is the ‘womb of the earth’ [seno della terra] and of a single natural and vital fire, which is the sun.*
Elsewhere in the manuscript, Neri discusses several specific mines. He discusses the use of "vitriol" water that flowed in certain mines and how it could be used to transmute iron into copper. He discusses an unidentified mine "some distance from Leiden" (possibly in Limburg) and another in Slovakia in the town of Smolnik. It is reasonable to think that Neri visited these places himself. A third location, which he purposely keeps under wraps, is where he obtained "immature" gold that he was able to "multiply" through alchemical manipulation. With a certain disappointment, he writes "To this day I have never found another mine like it, and therefore suitable for this purpose." Clearly, he spent a significant portion of his time looking. He advises:
The gold mines are not all in the same condition, which is well understood for those of silver and all the other [metals]. Some are already perfect, in which nature has done what it could do and reduced the gold to its maturity, while other [mines] are still imperfect and in their infancy*
In his work for Medici prince Don Antonio in Florence, Neri's assistant/disciple was Agnolo della Casa. Della Casa took copious notes of Neri's experiments, and literally filled thousands of pages in notebooks that are today held by the National Library in Florence. Much of this material dealt with the transmutation of metals, and as we have seen Neri was not only concerned with materials, but with their specific place of origin. His first manuscript was titled "Treasure of the World, By Priest Antonio Neri – which [covers] the whole of alchemy with various illustrations, not only of the furnaces, vessels and chemical instruments but with other illustrations concerning the mining of all the metals." For he and his colleagues, mining and alchemy shared theoretical connections but also familial ones. Della Casa had a relative named Filippo Talducci della Casa (1543- c.1615), who was a celebrated alchemist and mining engineer, working in Prague and Krakow for the Holy Roman Emperor. Last but not least, there was also a practical connection. Mining provided many of the raw materials used in Antonio Neri’s glassmaking activities.  

* For a full discussion of Neri’s Discorso, see M. G. Grazzini, “Discorso sopra la Chimica: The Paracelsian Philosophy of Antonio Neri”, Nuncius 27, pp. 411-467.

** This post first appeared here 30 April 2014.

Wednesday, September 4, 2019

Reticello Glass

Reticello by Aaron Tate (detail),
Photo by David Lindes.
In fine art of the early twentieth century, ‘cubist’ painters and sculptors caused a sensation by pioneering a style that was fluid and emotional yet rigorously geometric. Earlier still, eighteenth century Baroque musicians thrilled audiences with ‘counterpoint’; music that was melodic and harmonious yet structured with an almost mathematical precision. The recurrence of similar themes in widely differing arts is perhaps not so surprising. When successful, these are themes that resonate deeply within us; they amplify what is common to our nature and remind us that we are in the world together. 

In sixteenth century Venice, a form of glasswork emerged that anticipated these juxtapositions to similar popular acclaim. In fact, the technique of ‘reticello’ went on to become an enduring trademark of Murano technical skill and artistry. To this day, well executed pieces of reticello glass are coveted by collectors and displayed with great pride. 

The form is characterized by a transparent glass base which is embedded with a network of crisscrossing threads of opaque glass, forming a lattice of diamond shaped pockets. Classically, white 'latimo' glass was used in a clear 'cristallo' base.The overall effect is reminiscent of fine lace or of fishing net, both of which are strongly evocative in Venetian culture. When executed in the classical technique of the island’s glassblowers, each diamond in the pattern contains a single bubble of trapped air, perfectly centered and uniformly sized. 

In general, the latticework theme in art traces to much earlier times. It is common in Hellenistic and Islamic art. To an extent it is a natural consequence of mosaic making. However the application of the pattern in glassblowing requires a completely different approach and a complex series of steps. First a ‘filigrana’ bubble is formed. To accomplish this, a series of pencil thin glass rods called ‘canes’ are laid side by side, touching each-other, in a pan ('piera' in Venetian, 'pietra'=stone in Italian) and partially fused together in the furnace.[1] Each cane is made of transparent glass with a core of opaque glass (a thread) running its entire length. Glass artist Emilio Santini writes:
On Murano, the "piera" is coated with a thin layer of clay from the laguna marshes. This is rich in salt and does not stick too much on the glass even if overheated. Then they preheat the, piera (called a 'plate' in the US) to dry the clay. While it is still hot but not scorching they lay down the canes so they are partially warmed before they go in the furnace. Remember that they are not annealed [and could easily shatter from thermal shock]. Then two little square metal pieces are placed at the two ends to hold the cane in place. These are called fereti (V) ferretti (I) . Some of these same terms are also used in the US by skillful glass blowers.[2]

On the end of an iron blowpipe, the fused mat of glass rods is wrapped around into a hollow cylinder. Next the open end is gently worked closed. This forms a sealed bubble of glass that can be manipulated by standard glassblowing techniques. Soft from the heat of the furnace, the glass can be given a twist so the parallel threads form a loose spiral. This piece is stored in a ‘garage’ kiln while a second bubble is formed in the same way but with the spiral running in the opposite direction. The first bubble is opened wide at one end, removed from its iron rod and placed in a cradle on the floor which holds it upright. The second bubble is carefully lowered into the open end of the first bubble. The glass artist stands above, with the second bubble inside the first and blows, inflating the inner glass until it comes in contact with the outer bubble.

Because both glass bubbles are formed with canes, they have a ribbed texture both inside and outside. When the two glass bubbles contact each other, the high-points of the ribs meet first, which is where the threads of the two bubbles cross. The valleys of the ribs are where one cane is fused to the next; these areas cross between the bubbles at the center of each diamond in the pattern. The two bubbles fuse together trapping air in the valleys. As the glass is worked and heated these regions form small, perfectly round air bubbles trapped inside the glass. You can see this for yourself by taking two or three fingers of each hand and crossing them against each other. Imagine the threads of opaque glass running down the center of each finger. The air bubbles are trapped where you can see light between your fingers.
Reticello ("fillacello") style flamework pendant,
by Adam Reetz 2015.

The distinctive diamond pattern of reticello has been successfully achieved with other glassmaking techniques. In flameworking, glass is manipulated using only a torch and handtools. The torch is fixed to a bench where the artist either stands or sits. In general, this is a more accessible technique because it does not require a glass furnace. Here, the reticello pattern is accomplished by starting with glass tubing. The crisscross pattern is ‘painted’ onto the outside of the tubing, one line at a time; with very thin rods of glass known as “stringers.” In one version, evenly spaced straight parallel lines are drawn along the length of the tube. The tube is then reheated in the flame and twisted. Next, a second set of lines are drawn twisting in the other direction, forming the diamonds. The ends of the tube are drawn down and one end can be mounted to a rod or tube of glass and further manipulated in the flame. 

In a testament to the continued popularity of reticello, a new colorful variation of the flamework technique has emerged within the past decade, among American flameworkers. [3] This has been playfully dubbed “fillacello.” After painting the fishnet pattern on tubing, and further working the glass, the individual diamonds are “filled” with various colors using stringers. The resulting effect recalls mosaics and the ancient inspirations of reticello.

[1] The iron tool used to move the 'piera' of filigrana cane in and out of the furnace is called a 'pasorale' (V), 'pastorale' (I) = pastoral, named after the staff carried by the pope. It consists of a straight rod with a U-shaped fork in the end. Thanks to Emilio Santini for his kind assistance with Muranese terminology and knowledge of hotshop technique.
[2] Private correspondence, March 2015. Here is a video of the reticello technique as executed by American glass artist Dante Maroni. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ3DDon23Lc
[3] My research point to the first examples of this technique emerging on the west coat of the United States around 2005-07. (Further information on its origin would be greatly appreciated).