Month: September 2022

THE NATURAL INGREDIENTS that Theophilus mentions include various plants, human urine, teeth and hair of very specific animals, and both human and animal blood. Dung was a key ingredient of one recipe. https://lnkd.in/d7yzXt5 View in LinkedIn

IMPLICIT CHEMISTRY. In the middle ages, chemistry as such did not exist, but it was ingeniously practiced empirically by craftsmen. It is rather easy, today, to read his recipes and deduce the chemical reactions that were being undertaken. Like the ingenuity of cooking methods worldwide, artisanal workers came upon extraordinary solutions to their undertakings. I call it the distributed genius spread over generations of trial and error. https://lnkd.in/d7yzXt5 View in LinkedIn

THEOPHILUS WAS A CRAFTSMAN. “He mentions that he has gained experience of the methods that he is about to describe, having “examined them individually with careful trial and proved them all with hand and eye.” https://lnkd.in/d7yzXt5 View in LinkedIn

INTIMATE KNOW-HOW. “He knows, for example, all the actual problems of gilding: that too much glue will blacken the gold, that impure glue will cause it to crumble and too thick a leaf will not stay on.” https://lnkd.in/d7yzXt5 View in LinkedIn

CAUTIONS TO READERS. “He warns the painter and glass-worker of the particular danger of flame when preparing varnish or blowing glass, he tells the gilder of the difficulty of recovering his gold leaf if he should lose it in a draft, he cautions the workman about the dangers of using quicksilver on an empty stomach.” (The last caution sends shivers down my spine -- handling raw mercury with abandon). https://lnkd.in/d7yzXt5 View in LinkedIn

BIG OOPS AS A LEGACY. “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” (Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943). https://lnkd.in/dif7Y_D View in LinkedIn

Light can completely change a familiar image into something different. View in LinkedIn

MAKING EVERYTHING YOURSELF. It was not sufficient for a metalworker to know metal. “Before embarking on metalwork one must learn what kind of workshop to build, how to make the work-furnace, the bellows, the anvils, hammers, pincers, files, chisels, rasps, chasing tools, crucibles and so on, and also have some knowledge of how the relevant metal is itself produced.” https://lnkd.in/d7yzXt5 View in LinkedIn

FOUR GLASS KILNS NEEDED BUILDING. “Again, before making stained glass, one must know how to make the kilns, the vessels to contain the ingredients and also the glass itself.” Not to mention the exacting and complex recipes for making the glass paints, and colored glass. https://lnkd.in/d7yzXt5 View in LinkedIn

THE MEDIEVAL ARTIST. “His skill, he sees, above all else, as a gift from God...which can still be used to reflect something of the essential purpose of Man -- the praise of God. The art itself, for him, a work of beauty, but it is far more, for it is an act of worship and praise.” https://lnkd.in/d7yzXt5 View in LinkedIn