Sara Vincx

Still life with façon de Venise wineglass,
Alexander Adriaenssen (1587-1661)
Antwerp. 

In honor of Women’s History Month, I am reprising this post, first published on 4 October 2013. In the 1590s, after the death of her husband, Sara Vincx ran a successful glassmaking business in the city of Antwerp. She is the first documented female owner of a glass furnace anywhere. 

The Dutch Eighty Years' War for independence from Spain was heating up in Flanders; towns were being pillaged and burned to the ground throughout the Low Countries. Even so, Vincx ably managed a crew of Venetian expatriates and successfully defended her glass patents in court. Later, she remarried to Filippo Gridolfi. The two went on to open a sales shop on the Meir and welcomed glassmaker Antonio Neri to work at their facility. Neri was living in the city on an extended seven year long visit to his friend and fellow alchemical experimenter Emmanuel Ximenes. Here is the original post:

The seven years that Antonio Neri spent in Antwerp were arguably the most formative for his knowledge of glassmaking. While his first exposure to the art was in Italy, a large portion of the skills and recipes exhibited in his book trace to his activities in the Low Countries. Neri writes "This will make a beautiful aquamarine so nice and marvelous, that you will be astonished, as I have done many times in Flanders in the city of Antwerp to the marvel of all those that saw it." On tinting rock crystal: "In Antwerp, I made quite a bit of this, some ranged in tint from an opal color that looked very beautiful, to a girasol, similarly nice." On equipment: "In Antwerp, I built a furnace that held twenty glass-pots of various colors and when fired for twenty-four hours everything fused and purified." He also speaks of chalcedony glass, paste gems  and ultramarine paint all crafted in Antwerp. 

During Neri's visit, the premier glass factory in Antwerp was operated by Filippo Gridolfi and Neri was on good terms with him. Gridolfi and his wife possessed an exclusive license to produce cristallo glass in the Venetian style (façon de Venice). The license, or patent as it was called, passed down from previous owners, was quite a valuable part of the operation. Employed in his shop was a steady stream of craftsmen from Murano. They produced the finest glassware for the elite class of Antwerp and surrounding areas. Because these craftsmen were bringing the secret techniques with them, they worked outside of the guild system, through special arrangements with the local authorities.    

Before Gridolfi, the furnace was run, and run with success, by his then soon-to-be wife, Sara Vincx (or Vincks). She was the widow of the former owner, Ambrogio de Mongarda. Gridolfi had previously worked in the shop under Mongarda, who had been in the business for twenty years. Vincx was pressed into service by unhappy circumstances. In 1594, Ambrogio returned alone to Venice to recuperate from gout, but by the following year he was dead, leaving Sara to both run the glass shop and care for at least eight young children. Sara Vincx carries a distinction as the first documented female owner of a glass furnace anywhere. She took an active role in the business as attested by lawsuits she filed, and won, against rival shops that violated her patent. She also expanded the furnace and hired two new artisans to increase production.

Despite the war and the blockade of the Scheldt River in Antwerp, the glass furnace there thrived and reached its zenith under Vincx and Gridolfi. Soon after their marriage, seventeen employees were counted working at the shop. They established their own retail presence on the Meir, selling high-end cristallo to the elite within steps of the Ximenes palace and the d'Evora jewelers. Their glass operation enjoyed top-rung status, and no doubt, Antonio Neri's involvement must have bolstered the reputation of the firm even further.

Women in Early Modern Alchemy

Antonio Neri, 1598-1600,
MS Ferguson 67, f. 25r.

In honor of Women's History Month, is a post that was first published here on 30 October 2013. There is little doubt that women have participated in the practice of alchemy since its beginnings. Maria Prophetissima, also known as Mary the Jewess, is perhaps the best known female alchemist. None of her writings are known to have survived, but she is thought to have lived around the third century. Legend tells that the "bain-marie" (double boiler) is named after her.  

In the seventeenth century, One of Antonio Neri’s manuscripts depicts three women running chemical equipment. It is likely that these were nuns, trained in the same Church sponsored educational system that produced Neri. Convents were often expected to be self sufficient, and many ran their own pharmacies. Antonio Neri had sisters as well as brothers, and at least one sister entered a convent located on the north side of Florence, near the laboratory where he practiced alchemy and made glass. The fact that specific names have not been associated with Neri’s  three female co-workers should not deter us from celebrating their contribution to the birth of early modern science.

Within a year of his ordination in the Catholic Church, Antonio Neri began an ambitious treatise, illustrated in his own hand, devoted to "all of alchemy." Six of the illustrations in this manuscript, completed in 1600, show women tending equipment. What is remarkable is that, in the historical record, female participation in alchemy is otherwise extremely rare. 

Two pictures show female alchemists at work. In both cases, the 

Antonio Neri, 1598-1600, 
MS Ferguson 67, f. 35r.

technician stands behind a dedicated piece of apparatus, facing forward, giving the impression of propriety in an arranged portrait. The first drawing depicts a furnace and vessels used to make liquid mercury from its ore. The other shows a different type of furnace with a 'tower,' used as an efficient way to cook ceruse (white lead oxide). These images are part of a larger set of two dozen similar drawings that each illustrate the equipment used to prepare a specific product, many include a furnace and glassware. Nine of these show a single individual, (or in one case two men) tending the equipment. 

Three other illustrations in the manuscript are notable for their

Antonio Neri, 1598-1600, 
MS Ferguson 67, f. 37r.

engagement of women. These pictures show details of kitchen and nursing work; what might be termed more traditional female roles in the sixteenth century. Two of these illustrations are devoted to the respective arts of preparing plants and animals. They show women working alongside men performing various tasks. A third illustration shows medicinal fogging tents tended by a woman. Inside one tent, a male patient sits on a bench, exposed and breathing fumes pumped in by a large vessel perched over a fire.

These images also present clues to the circumstances of Antonio Neri's work environment. We may well be looking at operations inside the Casino di San Marco soon after prince Don Antonio de' Medici's occupation of the facility. The presence of women among Neri’s colleagues indicates a social setting with a camaraderie not displayed in other alchemical works of the period.