Art and Science

 

Jacopo Ligozzi,1518,  fanciful glass vessels,

ink and watercolor on paper.

Antonio Neri's writing on glassmaking and alchemy was distinguished from that of many contemporary authors in that his work was all deeply rooted in hands-on experience. He worked in the early 17th century, when art and science were different sides of the same endeavor to understand the world. His contemporaries were often content to repeat century's old teachings about the four Aristotelian elements; that chemical interactions could be explained through an analysis of the balance between hot and cold, dry and wet. But more and more, these notions were being discarded and replaced. It is common to cite the invention of instruments, and other technical developments; these factors certainly did contribute to advancement. But many different forces worked toward the emergence of early modern science, and one in particular is so obvious that it is easily overlooked: artists.

Working with hot glass was a profession in which attention to nature was essential: artists did not have the luxury of fanciful explanations of physical processes. They were obliged by their work to learn the ways glass mixed, moved and behaved in the furnace, not as they imagined it should, but as it actually did. The only way to achieve the complex forms and vessels for which master glassblowers were renowned was through long experience. Failure to understand the glass and predict its properties accurately resulted in failure of the piece.

Neri was immersed in this environment and the same principles applied to his own work in formulating the glass. Ancient theories had little value if they did not accurately predict nature. Like the glass artists, the way forward for Neri was careful attention and hands-on experience. He learned the value of starting with highly purified ingredients for his glass melts. He learned that too much glass salt resulted in a putrid 'gall' that would need to be skimmed off the molten surface. Substituting salts made from fern plants, for the Kali based ones from the Levant, produced a more lustrous glass, yet it stiffened more quickly for the glassblowers.

A glass artist's work also serves as a kind of narrative. For those familiar with the techniques, a finished piece of glass work can be 'read' like a story: The handles were put on last, before that, perhaps a thin bead of color was applied to the lip of the vessel. And the work started as a blown bubble of glass, shaped and opened with special tools. Each step is an insight into the artist's technique, but also into the way nature itself operates. Each motion was a well practiced negotiation between the artist and the properties of the material.

On one hand, an artist's job was to produce objects contemplated for their physical beauty and cultural significance. On the other hand, the act of producing these objects created an environment where accurate reasoning flourished. By collecting artists and employing them together, the Medici rulers of Tuscany were creating a cauldron effect where experiences collected, stewed and nature's secrets unraveled.

* This post first appeared here on 23 October 2013.

Emerald Green Glass

 

Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, walking on palm leaves.
 Pietro Lorenzetti 1320

For Western Christians, Easter week begins with "Palm Sunday," a feast day that falls on the Sunday before Easter and celebrates Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. His procession is said to have included his followers laying palm tree leaves before him along his path. The connection to seventeenth century priest and glassmaker Antonio Neri is this: In his book L'Arte Vetraria, Neri describes his very best green glass with a colloquial expression; saying the recipe "carries the palm" for all other greens.   

Saint Justina of Padua with a palm frond,
Bartolo Montagna 1490s

In his book, Neri presents a string of recipes for variations of green glass. Finally, in chapter 35, he presents his ultimate green, which he titles: "Another Green, Which 'Carries the Palm' for All Other Greens, Invented by Me." The phrase "carries the palm" alludes to the biblical story of Jesus entering Jerusalem, in which the people welcomed him by laying down cloth and palm branches on the ground in his path. Even before that, the palm branch served as a symbol of victory; in ancient Greece, palm fronds were awarded to victorious athletes. Later in history, Roman lawyers who won a case decorated their doors with palm leaves.

Copper Sulfate (vitriol of copper)

Cristallino was a mid-grade glass made with a soda based plant ash from the Levant which Neri called "rocchetta." For this recipe, he blends it with common glass, and adds red lead oxide to the mix, in effect forming an early version of what we now call lead crystal. He "cleans" the glass by using the well-established technique of flinging the molten glass into a large tub of clean water. This had the effect of "washing out" excess glass salt (flux). In addition, it provided the opportunity to sort through the fragments to remove any undissolved metallic lead. Lead that did not go into the glass had the tendency to collect at the bottom of the clay crucible as lumps of molten metal. It could then eat a hole in the vessel, resulting in a glass-shop disaster, as Neri warns: 

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. Then add the color using the powder, made chemically by the dry distillation of vitriol of copper [chapter 31]. Also, add a little crocus of iron, but very little. The result will be a most marvelous beautiful green, the best that I ever made. It will seem just like an emerald of ancient oriental rock, and you can use it in every sort of job.

The "crocus of iron" mentioned above is simply iron oxide or 'rust' as it is more commonly known. The "vitriol of copper" he refers to is copper sulfate. Neri forms it in a laborious process that involves cutting copper sheet into small, coin-sized pieces, mixing it with sulfur, heating in the furnace and then reprocessing it several times. The result is then added to water and the soluble part is further processed, filtered and evaporated. The final product is a pure blue crystalline material that has uses for our alchemist that go far beyond glassmaking, as he alludes to in the final sentence of the book:

Although I have placed here the way to make this powder with much clarity, do not presuppose that I have described a way to make something ordinary, but rather a true treasure of nature, and this for the delight of kind and curious spirits.

*This post first appeared her in a slightly different form on 25 October 2013.

Turquoise Glass

  

Turquoise glass stamp

of calif Mustadi  c.1170.

It is estimated that turquoise is among the earliest gems ever mined. With colors that vary from pastel green to a bright sky blue, it has adorned Egyptian sarcophaguses of 5000 years ago, 3000-year-old Chinese art, Aztec death masks and the domes of Persian palaces. 

When traders brought it to Europe from the Mideast, it became known as "turks" or "turquoise" after the old French for "Turkish." While it has never been mined in Turkey, the most highly valued Persian stones were imported there and used extensively for trade. Polished pieces were famously mounted on Turkish equestrian saddles, in the belief that the material conferred sure-footedness and protection from injury during a fall.

As one of the first gems to be collected and traded, turquoise was also one of the first to be imitated. Egyptian faience blue is an early forerunner of glass. It is more porous than glass, but it contains all the same ingredients and could be cast into forms that look just like solid turquoise. In the seventeenth century, the genuine mineral and its imitation continued to hold importance. In Antonio Neri's book L'Arte Vetraria, the subject is mentioned several times; he offers one recipe to restore faded stones by soaking them in almond oil. For turquoise colored enamels he presents two different shades. On the subject of glass, he notes that "Sky Blue, or more properly turquoise, is a principal color in the art of glassmaking" and "I have made this color often, because it is very necessary in beadmaking and is the most esteemed and prized color in the art."

To make his imitation turquoise glass, Neri starts with a batch of high quality transparent aquamarine blue, to which he adds a specially prepared variety of common salt. "Add it little by little, until the aquamarine color loses its transparency and diaphany becoming opaque."

Take the sea salt known as black salt or rather coarse salt, since the ordinary white salt that they make in Volterra would not be good. Put this salt in a frit kiln or oven to calcine, in order to release all moisture and turn white. Next, grind it well into a fine white powder. This salt now calcined should be stored for the use of making sky blue or rather turquoise color as described below.

Sea salt is mostly composed of sodium chloride, which is like table salt that we use for food. However, it can include significant additional minerals, as implied by Neri’s description of it as "black salt." Additional elements can include sulfur, potassium, manganese and more. Regrettably, he leaves us with no further clues to its identity, nor does he explain why the recipe would not work as well with the salt available from Volterra. He goes on to advise that the mix should be used quickly, because if left to sit in the furnace, the glass would start to revert to an ugly transparent color. The remedy for this is to add more salt. He finishes with some practical advice for glassmakers about adding salt to molten glass:

The furnace conciatore should take careful note here, when you add this salt, if it is not well calcined it always bursts. Therefore, you should be cautious and shield your eyes and vision, because there is a danger you could be hurt. Add the doses of salt little by little putting in a bit at a time pausing from one time to the next until you see the desired color. With this, I do not rely on either dose or weight, but only on my eyes. When I see that the glass reaches the desired level of color, I stop adding salt. This all comes with experience. 

* This post first appeared her in a slightly shorter form on 9 April, 2014.

Golden Yellow Glass

Yellow Neon Chandelier, 1995

Dale Chihuly.

(Columbus, Indiana Visitors Center). 

"Very few people know how to make colors like golden yellow and solid red well. These are difficult and troublesome in the art of glassmaking, since in making them you must stick precisely to the doses, the timing, the details and the materials as prescribed. The smallest error will cause everything to be ruined, and the colors to be irreparably spoiled. Therefore, you must be on guard not to make mistakes. [1]

So says Antonio Neri in his groundbreaking 1612 book of glass recipes, L’Arte Vetraria. Elsewhere he warns in several places not to add “tartar” to any glass destined for yellow pigmentation. Tartar was a common additive to boost the ‘sparkle’ of a glass because it contained a high level of potassium carbonates. These converted to potassium oxide in the melt, which has a higher refractive index than the usual glass flux, sodium oxide. However, his actual glass recipes tend to contradict this advice. 

Neri says of his “fern glass,” which is entirely potassium based:

…This frit can be given a wonderful golden yellow color provided there is no tartar salt within, as described in the caution, because then golden yellow will not emerge. This crystal is given to a golden yellow that is far more beautiful and pleasant than can be achieved in cristallo made with Levantine polverino salt and with this crystal unlike the other, every kind of job can be done. [2]

“Polverino” was a sodium based plant product used in many of Neri’s glass recipes, which he says was derived from the Kali plant grown in the Levant. The plot thickens when, for yellow, he recommends substituting ‘rocchetta’ another soda based Kali derivative. 

His primary recipe for golden yellow is #46, in which he reveals two ingredients responsible for the color, paradoxically, one of them, in direct contradiction to his previous advice, is tartar: “For every 100 pounds of [glass], add 1 pound of tartar from the dregs of red wine. Use large pieces well vitrified naturally in bottles of wine, because the powder is no good. Crush these raw dregs well, and pass them through a fine sieve. For every 1 pound of these dregs, add 1 pound of prepared Piedmont manganese…” [3] To this he adds the advice that “the powder is always given in parts and given [to the frit], not to the fused glass, because then it will not tint.”

He also offers advice to add more or less pigment depending on the intended use of the glass: more for thin items, less for heavier ones. “For larger [thick] spit beads, it is said that at Murano they reduce the dose of [wine] dregs and manganese by nearly half.”

For Neri’s lead glass, he uses a different combination, this time pairing copper sulfate with iron oxide: “Take 16 pounds of cristallo frit and 16 pounds of lead calx. Mix them well and pass them through a sieve. To this material, add 6 ounces of thrice cooked copper, made with flakes of the kettle-smiths [chapter 28], and 2 pennyweight of iron crocus made with vinegar [chapter 17].” He goes on to advise, “If it leans toward greenishness, add a little iron crocus, which will remove the greenishness and will bring out a yellow color of the most beautiful gold.

Yellow is one of several colors that iron oxide can form in glass, and is used frequently in low-fire pottery glazes. In that realm, it has a reputation as a difficult, unstable color, as Neri alludes to in his warnings. But in modern, higher temperature borosilicate glass, iron oxide is relied on for a nice yellow. In modern soda-lime glass, cadmium, titanium or the exotic praseodymium are more likely choices. They produced bright reliable color that is stable at the higher temperatures of modern operations. In lead glass, selenium is the modern favorite for yellow.

[1] Neri 1612, ch. 45.
[2] ibid, ch 5.
[3] ibid, ch 46.

Ultramarine Blue

 

Scrovegni  Chapel, Padua

Frescos and ultramarine ceiling, Giotto 1306.

In his fifteenth century handbook for painters, Cennino Cennini said, "Ultramarine blue is a color illustrious, beautiful and most perfect, beyond all other colors; one could not say anything about it, or do anything with it, that its quality would not still surpass." The ancient Egyptians used ultramarine to decorate the sarcophaguses of their pharos. Later, Marco Polo reported that it was made at a lapis lazuli mine in Afghanistan. Its name alludes to these far-flung origins: ultra-marine = "beyond the sea." Venetians were probably the first in Italy to learn the extraction technique and import the raw lapis. Producing the rich blue pigment from the rock was no simple task; success required an elaborate set of steps. Because of the difficulty, for a time, an ounce of ultramarine was valued more highly than an ounce of pure gold. In the legal contracts drawn up for commissioned paintings, patrons often stipulated exact amounts of the precious material for the artist to use. Beyond its beauty, its presence in a painting signaled the wealth of its owner.

In the last part of his book, L'Arte Vetraria, Antonio Neri presents his recipes for a variety of paints, including one for ultramarine. In glassmaking, drinking goblets adorned with delicate paint-work raised their value and elevated them into the realm of art. Unlike enamels, which fired into the glass, most paint, including ultramarine could not survive the furnace, requiring application only after a piece was finished. The number of different paint and lake recipes in the book indicates Neri's familiarity with the craft. This, combined with his willingness to use other painter’s materials like "smalt" in his glass formulations, hints at a still unknown chapter in the alchemist's life. Perhaps, for a period in Antwerp, he worked directly with fine artists. Here is Neri’s ultramarine:

Take fragments of lapis lazuli, which you can find plentifully in Venice and at low prices. Get fragments that are nicely tinted a pretty celestial color and remove any poorly tinted fragments. Cull the nicely colored fragments into a pot and put it amongst hot coals to calcine. When they are inflamed throw them in fresh water and repeat this twice. Then grind them on a porphyry stone most impalpably to become like sifted grain flour. 
Take equal amounts, three ounces each, of pine pitch, black tar, mastic, new wax and turpentine, add one ounce each, of linseed oil and frankincense. I put these things in a clay bowl to warm on the fire until I see them dissolve and with a stirring rod, I mix and incorporate them thoroughly. This done, I throw them into fresh water, so they will combine into one mass for my needs.  

For every pound of finely powdered lapis lazuli, ground as described above, take ten ounces of the above gum cake. In a bowl over a slow fire, melt the gum, and when it is well-liquified throw into it, little by little, the finely powdered lapis lazuli. Incorporate it thoroughly into the paste with a stirring rod.

Cast the hot incorporated material into a vessel of fresh water and, with hands bathed in linseed oil, form a round cake, proportionately round and tall. You should make one or more other of these cakes from the quantity of the material. Then soak these cakes for fifteen days in a large vessel full of fresh water, changing the water every two days. In a kettle, you should boil clear common water and put the cakes in a well-cleaned, glazed earthen basin. Pour warm water over them and then leave them until the water has cooled. 

Empty out the water and pour new warm water over them. When it has cooled, pour again, replenishing the warmth. Repeat this many times over, so that the cakes unbind from the heat of the water. Now add new warm water and you will see that the water will take on a celestial color. Decant the water into a clean glazed pan, pour new [warm] water over the cake and let it color [the water].
When it is colored, decant it and pass it through a sieve into a glazed basin. Pour warm water over the cake, repeatedly until it is no longer colored. Make sure that the water is not too hot, but only lukewarm because too much heat will cause the blue to darken, hence this warning, which is very important. 

Pass all this colored water through a sieve into the basin. It still has the unctuosity of the gum, so leave it to stand and rest for twenty-four hours; all the color will go to the bottom. Then gently decant off the water with its unctuosity, pour clear water over it and pass it through a fine sieve into a clean basin. 

Pass the fresh water through the sieve with the color stirred-up so that this color still passes through and therefore a great part of the filth and unctuosity will remain in the sieve. Wash the sieve well and with new water again pass the color through. Repeat these steps three times, which ordinarily leaves all the filth on the blue resting in the sieve. Always wash the sieve each time, cleaning it of all contamination. Put the blue in a clean pan. Gently decant off the water and then leave it to dry. You will have a most beautiful ultramarine, as I have made many times in Antwerp. 

The amount per pound of lapis lazuli will vary. It depends on whether the lapis has more or less charge of color and on the beauty of its color. Grind it exceedingly fine on the porphyry stone, as described above and you will succeed beautifully.  

For a quite beautiful and sightly biadetto blue that mimics ultramarine blue, take ordinary blue enamel and grind it exceedingly fine over the porphyry stone, as above. Incorporate it into the gum cake with the dose described above and hold it in digestion in fresh water for fifteen days as with the lapis lazuli. Follow the directions for the lapis lazuli, in all and for all, until the end. These blues are not only useful to painters, but they also serve in order to tint glasses par excellence.

 

Gold Ruby Glass

 

A gold florin.

Legend claims gold ruby glass

 was discovered when a nobel threw

a gold coin into a glass maker's crucible.

Antonio Neri is best remembered for writing L'Arte Vetraria. It was the first printed book entirely devoted to the formulation of glass, which he published in Florence, Italy, in 1612. If we were to single out just one of his more than a hundred recipes, covering glass, lead crystal, paste gems and enamels, it would have to be his prescription for "Transparent Red" ruby glass made with gold. This recipe still captivates glass artists today, as it has since Neri wrote the book. In fact, gold ruby glass is closely tied to the lore of alchemy and has intrigued experimenters as well as artists and collectors since the Roman Empire, possibly before.

Alchemists had long thought gold to be the perfect metal and that all other "lesser" metals (read: lead, tin, copper, iron, mercury and silver) could be coaxed to fully "mature" into gold. Experimenters thought that if they could capture the "essence" of the king of metals, it could be used to "seed" the other metals, and transmute them into pure gold. This is where ruby glass comes into the discussion. In general, glass is colored by the addition of finely powdered metals. Depending on the metal and how it is treated, a whole rainbow of colors can be produced in glass. Alchemists were convinced that the color was an indication that this "essence" of the metal had been released into the glass. 

Cranberry glass or Gold Ruby
 treasury chamber of the Wittelsbacher , Munich Residenz.

For artists and collectors, gold ruby is simply a very attractive color; the difficulty of producing it and working with it only adds to its cachet. Transparent red in glass can be produced other ways, notably with copper, but copper red has a slightly more orange color. Gold ruby, on the other hand, has a characteristic red color that can have slight hints of purple. It can be made light and ethereal or dark and heavily saturated, but viewed next to its competitors, it has a very distinctive hue that experts pride themselves on recognizing.

Neri’s recipe involves moistening gold powder with "aqua regia," which we know as a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids. He then spreads this wet mixture on an earthenware pan and heats it in the furnace "until it becomes a red powder, which will take place after many days." Here is that color change that alchemists looked for as an indication of transformation; we know today that Neri was producing gold chloride. This is one of the very few chemical compounds that gold forms and in fact, this is one of the main things that makes gold so special: it does not rust, nor corrode or tarnish, which are, in the end, all chemical reactions between the metal and its environment.

Neri directs his readers to sprinkle, little by little, the gold chloride into the glass melt. He says to "Use fine cristallo, thrown in water many times." Cristallo is the exceptionally clear glass invented by Venetian craftsmen, and "washing" was a technique to remove excess water soluble flux and other contaminants. He finishes his instructions abruptly by saying this method "will make the transparent ruby red glass; but you must experiment in order to find it." In other recipes, Neri goes to great lengths to explain his methods in detail, here he seems content to barely scratch the surface. Much speculation has taken place over the reason for this surprisingly short recipe. Was he ordered, perhaps by his Medici overlords, to keep details to a minimum? Some have wondered if Neri even knew how to produce gold ruby; the short recipe may have been a cover for his lack of knowledge.

Doubts about Neri's gold ruby glass recipe grew after his death, when it was discovered by other experimenters that the addition of small amounts of tin into the mix produced the ruby color quickly and reliably. This compound of tin and gold chloride was called "Cassius purple" after one of its inventors and its color. In some circles it was thought that the tin was an essential ingredient, a lost secret that had been rediscovered. The argument was that gold chloride alone could not produce the color, it must be combined with tin in the form of Cassius purple. However, this is not the case. 

In an 1846 edition of the Journal of the Franklin Institute (ser. 3, v. 11), professor of chemistry and natural philosophy, E. L. Schubarth, cites numerous investigators who demolish this theory. He wrote:

It must not be imagined from this, as some persons have lately stated, that it is necessary to use gold [combined with tin] in the state of Cassius purple.

Neri, at the end of the sixteenth and commencement of the seventeenth century, stated, that in order to stain glass a ruby color, it was only necessary to employ calcined chloride of gold. At a later period, Libar wrote to the same effect, and Merret certified that he had proved the efficacy of the process. In 1834 Golfier Besseyre stated, in the Journal of Pharmacy, that Douault Wieland colored his paste with perchloride of gold only. Lastly, in 1836, Fuss writes, that in Bohemia all the ruby-colored glass was prepared with chloride of gold only, and that glass might be stained red as well with metallic gold, as with oxide of gold or Cassius purple.

It is therefore a fact known for some time, that glass may be stained red, without either Cassius purple or oxide of tin, with [only] metallic gold or preparations of gold. In the glass-works of Bohemia and Silesia perchloride of gold only is used, without the addition of oxide of tin, in order to produce their fine rose or carmine-colored glass.

Of the men cited, Douault-Wieland was a Parisian jeweler who was famous for his artificial gems and crystal glassware. He was praised for his skills by Napoleon. Paul Golfier-Besseyre was a well respected French chemist. Besides many other endeavors, he worked for the glass industry and performed numerous experiments on the formulation of glass. He produced a gold ruby using the same ingredients as Neri. He determined good color could be achieved by letting a new batch of the glass age for a protracted period of time at temperatures below the melting point of gold. Periodically, he removed the glass from the furnace and poured it into water to wash it. The result was a yellowish glass when molten, but when a gaffer finished a piece it was gently reheated and the ruby color developed. 

Flexible Glass

 

Roman Emperor Tiberius - Glass paste cameo

 c 20CE 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.