[Fwd: [MR] Barilla, Glasswort, and Sodium Carbonate]

[rmhowe]

There's not much you aren't interested in is there Charles?
You and Rebecca the Contrary should hook up. ;) Wife permitting.

I ordered a bunch of new stuff from Oxbow today. One book I have
had locally of Barnes and Noble's bargain shelves is excellent.

Stern, E.Marianne & Schlick-Nolte, Birgit: EARLY GLASS OF THE ANCIENT
WORLD, 
1600 B.C. - A.D.50; 1994. Card covers. The Ernesto Wolf Collection. 4to, 
432 pages, 116 pages of scholarly text with over 200 monochrome plates, 
plus over 200 colour plates of catalogue items with extensive
descriptions
of each piece. $15 at Barnes and Noble / $80 from Oxbow/David Brown
Books.

As far as Faience which contains Natron. It was being imported into
England, Scotland and Europe in the Bronze Age. I have articles on it.
 
McKerrel, Hugh:  On the Origins of British Faience Beads and Some
Aspects of the
Wessex-Mycenae Relationship; in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 
Vol. 38, 1972, pp. 286-99 with chemical analyses of the different
faiences
from Egypt, Britain, and Mycenae, and a full page bibliography. Charts
but
no pictures.  Suggests import to Britain about 1450 BC. 

Newton, R.G., and Colin Renfrew: British Faience Beads Reconsidered; 
in Antiquity XLIV, 1970, pp.199-206 including a partial page
bibliography.
No illustrations. Takes up the pre-Childe attitude that British and
Scottish 
beads of the Bronze Age were locally manufactured on the basis of 
spectrographic analysis.

Egyptian Faience and Glass; by Paul T. Nicholson; Shire Egyptology 18,
80pp,
card cover, Color covers and B&W Illustrations, book is evenly split 
pagewise as to glass and faience. ISBN 0747801959. $10.60.
http://www.shirebooks.co.uk/ will take you to other books on historical
glass from different periods.

It was also used as an inlay for Egyptian Furniture and objects:
Egyptian Woodworking and Furniture; by Geoffrey Killen; Shire Egyptology
21,
1994, 64 pages, 65 illustrations, card cover, ISBN 0747802394.  $10.60.

Some of the glass in the mosaics and the ruins of Roman buildings was
mined
by the newer, later residents and traded north from the Frisians to the
Vikings in the Dark Ages and a bit thereafter. Many beads came from it.
Fortunately they never mined Ravenna which is where the best mosaics
are. There is a wonderful color tour book called Ravenna, the City of
Mosaics.
The Romans had a very active glass industry that was traded everywhere
and many shards of broken vessels must have been reused. 

One of the hoped for industries that was supposed to have fueled English
Interests in the new world was the attempt at starting a Glass House
near
Jamestown. A replica is there today, and not long ago they excavated the
remains of the first laboratory near there. It wasn't just the chemicals
but also the fuel. Charcoal got rather scarce in England over the
preceding
Centuries. Plenty of trees here, not so many there for an industry.
And good clean sand in abundance. All they had to do was find the
other chemicals and survive the famine and indians, which few of them
did, as we know now. The Federal Jamestown site looks mostly barren with
remains of a larger later building and the walls of the earlier ones.
Near the big, low wall of the church are the remains of a great many
individuals who died the first two years.

You made a good post. Later generations frequently feed on the bones
left by their predecessors. 

Magnus

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [MR] Barilla, Glasswort, and Sodium Carbonate
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 14:37:13 -0400
From: "Towey, Brian" <cbt4489 at GlaxoWellcome.com>
To: "SCA Atlantia List" <atlantia at atlantia.sca.org>

Friends and neighbors, 

Last year we had a spirited discussion of medieval chemistry, especially
of
lye and quick lime.

Noting that sodium carbonate is an important ingredient in glass
manufacture, I wondered where medieval Europe might have gotten it by
the
ton.  All the way from the Wadi Natron in Egypt?  That seemed unlikely. 
A
chemist on the list assured us that there was no industrial synthesis by
which glassmakers could have made sodium carbonate from, say, other
carbonates such as limestone.

So, where did they get it?

I stumbled across a clue while browsing a list of occupational names. 
That
and some dictionary cross-references gave me the following picture:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Barillaro, Barillari, occupational names: burners of saltwort for making
glass and ceramics

Barilla, n. - Saltwort ash

Glasswort, n 1: bushy plant of Old World salt marshes and sea beaches
having
prickly leaves; burned to produce a crude soda ash [syn: saltwort,
barilla,
kali, kelpwort, Salsola kali, Salsola soda] 2: fleshy maritime plant
having
fleshy stems with rudimentary scalelike leaves and small spikes of
minute
flowers; formerly used in making glass [syn: samphire, Salicornia
europaea] 

King Lear, Act IV, Scene vi:
  Come on, sir; here's the place: stand still. How fearful 
  And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low! 
  The crows and choughs that wing the midway air 
  Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down 
  Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!

Salsola \Sal"so*la\, n. [NL., fr. L. salsus salt, because they contain
alkaline salts.] (Bot.) A genus of plants including the glasswort. 

Soda ash, crude sodium carbonate; -- so called because formerly obtained
from the ashes of sea plants and certain other plants, as saltwort
(Salsola).

And here's the kicker....

alkali [Arab., al-gili=ashes of saltwort] The term alkali originally
applied
to salts obtained from plant ashes and is sometimes applied to a
carbonate
of sodium or potassium...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Mystery solved!

Your servant,

Charles Fleming
"Miror Otium Negotium Multum Requirere"

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