• About
  • Alchemy in Medieval and Tudor England

distillatio

~ Medieval alchemy, chemistry related technology and random things distilled from books and artefacts

distillatio

Tag Archives: vessels

Alchemical illustrations, colours and an odd vessel

07 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by guthriestewart in Alchemy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

alchemy, colour, vessels

A friend linked to a short online collection of pictures of alchemical manuscripts, which included a 15th century Germany/ Austrian Donum Dei of pseudo-Arnaldian type, or at least it refers to him a few times.

http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=1271&CollID=9&NStart=2560

Now the interesting thing is the vessel, which is unlike any I have seen elsewhere. It is like an upside down alembic, but sealed except for the spout. How precisely it is supposed to work is unclear. So that is the first mystery, although it might be based more on my lack of knowledge of alchemical vessels, and of course the lack of any real broad study of them despite their widespread existence throughout many hundreds of surviving manuscripts.

The second interesting point is the colours used in the pictures. There is of course a red king inside it, a white queen, as usual for 15th century alchemy, and one picture has this:

http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=9287

Which is the same odd sort of flask with lower half labelled aqua, the captions saying something to do with philosophical sulphur and whitening and cleaning the black and white.

But note the three red circles, three white, two green and two blue. Is this an accident that they are probably the four elements, red being fire, blue perhaps air, or what? Colours turn up frequently within alchemical illustrations and descriptions, but the only ones people have really noticed are the red and white. Of course the four elements correspond to specific colours too, but not always the same ones. Which is where it gets tricky, because previous research I have done couldn’t reach a decent conclusion about the use of colours within one alchemical manuscript, and if they had a definite purpose and meaning to them in the specific situation. In general, alchemists seemed to have different ideas of what each colour meant, or when it was supposed to appear in the alchemical work. Red, white and black are important, but not generally blue, which is associated more with one of the elements, air or water.

So if I were being adventurous, I would suggest that it means you need equal amounts of red and white and lesser of green and blue, and they might correspond to the four elements. But that is just speculation at this stage and it is more likely that they don’t mean anything. More research required as usual.

Advertisements

Blogs I Follow

  • medievalcolours
  • Ordered Universe
  • Baked in Fire
  • Stranger Than Fiction
  • Ruth Fillery-Travis
  • The Recipes Project
  • Jeanne de Montbaston
  • My medieval foundry
  • These Fragments
  • Ether Wave Propaganda
  • medievalfragments
  • The Renaissance Mathematicus
  • Haandkraft
  • badarchaeology.wordpress.com/
  • Medieval colours
  • opusanglicanum
  • St. Thomas guild - medieval woodworking, furniture and other crafts
  • Medieval manuscripts blog
  • distillatio
  • The WordPress.com Blog

Recent Comments

A review and expansi… on The invention and manufacture…
A review and expansi… on Not one of the earliest recipe…
j pollard on Where were medieval church bel…
j pollard on Where were medieval church bel…
guthriestewart on Where were medieval church bel…
j pollard on Where were medieval church bel…
guthriestewart on Where were medieval church bel…
j pollard on Where were medieval church bel…
guthriestewart on Using Oak Galls to dye wo…
nn on Using Oak Galls to dye wo…
guthriestewart on Making red and yellow from…
Anon on Making red and yellow from…
JDP on Distillation by alchemists and…
Our Lady of Tombelai… on Casting tin Ampullae
giom on The Green lion eating the sun…

Tags

acid acids alchemical texts alchemy alembic arabic alchemy bells bronze casting buckles buttons casting clothing copper alloy criticism Distillation divine water dyeing errors false gold furnaces glass Graeco-Egyptian alchemy green green vitriol history of science ink lead lute lye medicine medieval medieval alchemy medieval technology mineral acid mineral acids nitric acid Norton pewter pewter casting quintessence re-enactment saltpetre silver sublimation texts Tudor tunic urine writing yellow
Advertisements

Blog at WordPress.com.

medievalcolours

Ordered Universe

Baked in Fire

A song of Spice and Fire; adventures in medieval cooking.

Stranger Than Fiction

Edinburgh Non-fiction Writers' Group

Ruth Fillery-Travis

Eclectic PhD. Writing about archaeology, science, listening, learning and Higher Education

The Recipes Project

Medieval alchemy, chemistry related technology and random things distilled from books and artefacts

Jeanne de Montbaston

Reading Medieval Books

My medieval foundry

Exploration and re-creation of medieval casting techniques

These Fragments

A research blog about Early Medieval artefacts

Ether Wave Propaganda

History and Historiography of Science

medievalfragments

Turning Over a New Leaf

The Renaissance Mathematicus

Just another WordPress.com weblog

Haandkraft

Medieval alchemy, chemistry related technology and random things distilled from books and artefacts

badarchaeology.wordpress.com/

Medieval colours

Medieval alchemy, chemistry related technology and random things distilled from books and artefacts

opusanglicanum

one Englishwoman's work

St. Thomas guild - medieval woodworking, furniture and other crafts

Medieval alchemy, chemistry related technology and random things distilled from books and artefacts

Medieval manuscripts blog

Medieval alchemy, chemistry related technology and random things distilled from books and artefacts

distillatio

Medieval alchemy, chemistry related technology and random things distilled from books and artefacts

The WordPress.com Blog

The latest news on WordPress.com and the WordPress community.