Hot Piece of Glass

Not much new going on around here except work and being nominated for the highly distinguished Drysdale Award for the dullest blog over at Grant Miller Media so vote for me if you aren't too excited and drawn to my blog.

In unrelated news, I'm committing an excellent book to memory, 'The Arts of Antioch: Art Historical and Scientific Approaches to Roman Mosaics and a Catalogue of the Worcester Art Museum Antioch Collection'. This book delves deeply into the chemical makeup of the ancient pieces of the mosaics found in Antioch, or modern Antakya, Turkey.

I might just get a friend with a kiln to cook up some of the recipies that this book has (especially after spending about 800 euro on art glass last month). More importantly though, being able to control every aspect of the glass creation is what I find as the most appealing. Here is the furnace at the Orsoni factory in Venice which I saw in October.


















Finding this place in Canneregio was particularly difficult for me because 1) my GPS had the wrong address to begin with, 2) I had to go under the Sottopassageo Vedai, which was basically like a literal hole in the wall down an alleyway, 3) I didn't see any kind of sign other than the little bronze plaque by the doorbell (I blame this problem on US advertising where the signs are all at least human sized for every place of business), 4) I had had a half liter of red wine prior to starting out.

Most people don't know that many ancient Roman mosaics contain quite a bit of opaque colored glass. Usually wind dirt and erosion makes it look kind of like stone. Also, they put so much calcium and lime in some of the colors, it really does look more like a stone-based glass paste than the highly reflective mirrored glass of the Hubble telescope.


As a quick refresher, glass is made by heating up silica (sand), soda as a 'flux' which lowers the required temperature to melt the sand (sodium based, not soda like a coca cola), and lime. Sometimes other elements like calcium, copper sulfates, lead oxide, and stibnite were added to make the glass more opaque or to get certain colors.


The other variable in obtaining the colors is the controlled time that it takes for the glass to cool, or 'annealing'. For reds and oranges, the internal crystals have to grow just right. Several hundred years ago, only certain specialty shops had the knowledge to make red and orange glass. Lawrence Becker who is a co-author on the book above, conjectures that some of the pale blue and green glasses were actually failed attempts at producing finer and more expensive red glasses.


One of these glasses used by the Romans was the 'Natron' based glass, so named because of the place where the soda stone was found in Egypt (Wadi Natron). Did you realize that on the periodic table of elements, sodium is 'Na' because of this? I thought so.

You also have the low magnesium / high potassium glass, or LMHK, which they've traced the source of the soda in this one back to certain plant ash.

For your amusement here is a video of someone pouring a small amount of glass.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be pouring a wine glass for tonight.

How I Saved My Cup (Come Ho Salvato la Tazza Mia)

A few Saturdays ago, I was having a great cinnamon flavored morning coffee as I do sometimes while going over things I want to accomplish for the weekend. I was drawing up sketches of mosaics, designing and things like that which spirit away attention from the tedious and mundane. So I take a sip of the coffee, and *bleh*, it's not at least 5 degrees above my body temperature.

Being a pragmatist, I'm thinking that the microwave might be a good way to remedy the situation. So I 'top off' the cup with even more coffee to the very edge of the brim, full because I love morning cinnamon coffee and reason very soundly that more is better where coffee is concerned. Then strolled over to the microwave oven and popped it in for a minute.

The friendly little beep soon told me that my coffee was ready, so I opened the microwave door (but not right away). I know it's irrational, but does anyone else wait for the 'riccocheting electrons' to finish their magical brain-tumor inducing flight for a few seconds before opening the door? Even the legendary Jack Kilby (the inventor of the integrated circuit) wouldn't have one in his house.

So I grab the handle of my expensive porcelain coffee mug that's part of a set that can't be purchased anymore and take out the coffee. But, not too carefully. You see, as soon as my hand holding the coffee mug clears the microwave oven and is over kitchen tile, a little bit of it splashes out on my hand burning the crap out of it. Remember? I filled that sucker up to where only the surface tension of the coffee was keeping it in the cup.

This would be all well and good except, my hand at that point has involuntarily jerked just slightly because of the extreme pain from the hot coffee, causing little bits more of the steaming and nearly boiling coffee to flow over the edge of the mug, setting off a cruel chain reaction of burn, spill, burn, spill, burn... etc.

After what seemed like several minutes of this spill burn cycle (tm), I had plenty of time to think about dropping the cup, but decided against that because the set was irreplacable. I had time to think about setting it down, but would spill even more in the process maybe causing a more serious set of burns. I wondered about whether biodiesel is a better solution than hydrogen for alternative energy. Then finally, I mustered the will power to stop jerking my hand around.

Inspecting the damage, I saw there were only red marks and tender skin. No visible blisters!

Good times.

Also, as training to see like an artist, take a look at the picture below. Your brain will try really hard to only see two eyes even though there are physically four. If you can see like an artist, it won't disturb you. What do you guys think?