Glass making eventually returned to Britain with the re-build of Canterbury Cathedral in 1174, after a fire had destroyed the older Norman Cathedral, The glass was inspired by the building of Chartres Cathedral in France just prior to this, whose Glass makers were imported from the Middle East, as there were no persons with the required skills in Europe at that time. So the original glass makers of Chartres were Muslims and this is evident in some of the windows there.
The Glass maker who came to make the glass was called Lawrence Le Viteraux (The Glass), he set up in Kent. The glass being made was very rough and ready during the Middle Ages in Britain and a lot was still being imported from the Continent. There was a bit of a scorched earth policy for the glass makers as they made their wares in the ~Forest or in medieval time the Weald. Welding, the modern word means to join metal together using heat, the origination of the word comes from the medieval word for forest as all the work was done there. A lot of deforestation occurred during this period, which lasted right until James 1st was on the throne and he decreed that 'No Glass can be made using wood as fuel, save there being a single tree left standing upon this isle'. Therefore a new fuel had to be utilised and coal was the obvious choice.
Aside – Gaffer, is the medieval word for Glass maker – 'Glasser' the F & S were not defined at this time.
Coal was a difficult fuel to use as it does not burn clean like wood does so the furnaces had to be completely redesigned to allow for this new fuel. They came up with a Glass cone with covered pots to keep the glass clean. These edifices became landmarks in the the glass making centres around the country.
There is little known about the history of glassmaking in Britain during the next one thousand years, although we do know that glassmaking survived as a trade. In early 2004, a Saxon burial chamber was unearthed in Prittlewell in Essex and amongst the artefacts buried with the early Saxon was a beautifully preserved and intact blue glass bowl.
17th century glassmaker and alchemist Antonio Neri handled very dangerous materials on a daily basis. He used strong acids, which if splattered could easily burn flesh, or cause blindness. He handled poisonous compounds containing arsenic, mercury and lead. If ingested, or inhaled as fumes these materials caused progressive, irreversible damage to internal organs and especially to the nervous system. There is no question that Neri did take chances with his health, but he was not naive. He knew very well many of the potential dangers and others he could well imagine.
The 11th century saw the emergence in Germany of new ways of making sheet glass by blowing spheres. The spheres were then formed into cylinders and then cut while still hot, after which the sheets were flattened. This technique was perfected in 13th century Venice around 1295. What made Venetian Murano glass significantly different was that the local quartz pebbles were almost pure silica, which made the clearest and purest glass. The Venetian ability to produce this superior form of glass resulted in a trade advantage over other glass producing lands.
Glass making eventually returned to Britain with the re-build of Canterbury Cathedral in 1174, after a fire had destroyed the older Norman Cathedral, The glass was inspired by the building of Chartres Cathedral in France just prior to this, whose Glass makers were imported from the Middle East, as there were no persons with the required skills in Europe at that time. So the original glass makers of Chartres were Muslims and this is evident in some of the windows there.
The Glass maker who came to make the glass was called Lawrence Le Viteraux (The Glass), he set up in Kent. The glass being made was very rough and ready during the Middle Ages in Britain and a lot was still being imported from the Continent. There was a bit of a scorched earth policy for the glass makers as they made their wares in the ~Forest or in medieval time the Weald. Welding, the modern word means to join metal together using heat, the origination of the word comes from the medieval word for forest as all the work was done there. A lot of deforestation occurred during this period, which lasted right until James 1st was on the throne and he decreed that 'No Glass can be made using wood as fuel, save there being a single tree left standing upon this isle'. Therefore a new fuel had to be utilised and coal was the obvious choice.
Aside – Gaffer, is the medieval word for Glass maker – 'Glasser' the F & S were not defined at this time.
Coal was a difficult fuel to use as it does not burn clean like wood does so the furnaces had to be completely redesigned to allow for this new fuel. They came up with a Glass cone with covered pots to keep the glass clean. These edifices became landmarks in the the glass making centres around the country.
There is little known about the history of glassmaking in Britain during the next one thousand years, although we do know that glassmaking survived as a trade. In early 2004, a Saxon burial chamber was unearthed in Prittlewell in Essex and amongst the artefacts buried with the early Saxon was a beautifully preserved and intact blue glass bowl.
Glassmaking underwent a renaissance in the and 14th centuries. The revival began in Venice (a city which is still thought of as the glass capital of the world) and spread throughout Northern Europe. It would have been very likely that all towns of any size would have had their own glassmaker.
In Britain, during the reign of James I, a law was passed which forbade the use of wood as a fuel for trades. The effect of this was that glassmakers, along with potters and other craftsmen who needed substantial amounts of fuel, had to move to areas where there were alternative fuel sources. Bristol was one such place, having mined coal in the wooded areas to the north of the city since Tudor times. Other areas were the Midlands (even today, Stoke on Trent is renowned for its potteries and Stourbridge for its glass), the North East (again Sunderland was a major centre for glass and today has the National Glass Centre) and London where some of the most well-known firms operated including Whitefriars.
Bristol not only had a good supply of fuel but it had established trading links along the River Severn and out to the Atlantic and was second only to London in terms of economic importance. It also had easy access to other raw materials used in glassmaking such as sand from the Redcliffe Caves, kelp from Bridgwater, clay from further north along the Severn.
The city made very good use of its strategic importance and soon became one of the most important glassmaking centres in Europe. By the late eighteenth century there were some twenty glassmaking firms in Bristol. Most made crown (or window) glass or bottles but a good proportion made a beautiful range of flint glass tableware that was to become the city's legacy. Flint glass is known today as lead crystal.
Gong farmer (also gongfermor, gongfermour, gong-fayer, gong-fower or gong scourer) was a term that entered use in Tudor England to describe someone who dug out and removed human excrement from privies and cesspits. The word "gong" was used for both a privy and its contents. As the work was considered unclean and off-putting to the public, gong farmers were only allowed to work at night, hence they were sometimes known as nightmen. The waste they collected, known as night soil, had to be taken outside the city or town boundary or to official dumps for disposal.
Fewer and fewer cesspits needed to be dug out as more modern sewage disposal systems, such as pail closets and water closets, became increasingly widespread in 19th-century England. The job of emptying cesspits today is usually carried out mechanically using suction, by specialised tankers called vacuum trucks.
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Human waste "was used to manure the land or enrich the soil. The townsfolk of Newcastle-on-Tyne piled their ashes and dung [humanure] on a heap in the middle of town – the local farmers transported the refuse away once a year to be spread as manure. Malt dust, soap ashes, brine, hair, decaying fish, offal, entrails, and blood were all used as manure."
"While I would agree that industrialization would be unnecessary in tiny communities, potters would still have needed to dry and fire their posts. Forget efficient economies of scale at the firing stage. I would have assumed that the impediment was more the mental leap from the concept of building pots from coils to the notion of shaping a rotating lump by pulling upward."
Response:
"If this was the case why, after the Roman abandonment of Britain, do potters give up the potters' wheel as a making method? Pottery production still continues although on a much smaller scale. The issue is more one of training and space, vs returns. Fast wheel pottery takes several years to master, it's a serious piece of kit to construct, maintain and store and generally demands much more finely prepared clay. Clay that does not lend itself so well to open or clamp firing, both of which are better achieved with a coarser clay. Fine wheel thrown clay is far easier to fire in a kiln, another piece of equipment that needs to be built and maintained. Again, open firing can be achieved with almost any fuel, kilns on the other hand demand carefully prepared wood, gorse or brash. All time consuming and simply not worth it for domestic scale production."
Prior to the invention of the paper machine (~ 1800), all paper was handmade. Teams of three skilled, European artisans (vatman, coucher, layer) were capable of producing ~1500 sheets in a day.
[L to R] Vatman, Coucher, Layer at work.
Gelatin (produced by boiling animal bones or skins) was first used as an external surface sizing for paper in 1337 and continued as a dominant sizing agent of all European papers through the mid-19th century. Sizing reduces the tendency of dry paper to absorb liquid, allowing inks and paints to dry remain on the surface of the paper, rather than be absorbed into the paper. Thus, sizing provides a more consistent painting and writing surface. Papermaking, Parchment, Papyrus, Manuscripts https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXYFDuJaCJL3rWLyssXlZa-uUEmoUgJZr Papermaking, Parchment, Manuscripts: includes demonstration of coordinated actions of vatman, coucher, and layer.
"I made some pottery from the clay in the new area to see how well it performed. A large bank of clay was exposed by the side of the creek. I dug it out using a digging stick and took it back to the hut. Small sticks and stones were picked out of the clay and the whole mass was mixed to make sure there were no dry lumps. When this was done the clay was then left next to the fire to dry slightly so that it became a stiff workable material to form pots from. No further processing was done to the clay.
I formed small pinch pots from the clay by taking balls of it and pinching out the shape of the pots. Small cracks that formed while shaping were simply mended by wetting and smoothing over. Several pots were made this way. They were then left to dry completely next to the fire until they were completely dry.
To fire the pot, it was placed upside down in the hot coals and covered with sticks in a tipi fashion. The wood both acts as fuel and protects the pot from sudden changes in temperatures such as those caused by sudden winds. When the fire was burning well, I increased the temperature of the fire by fanning it with a fan palm frond. The pot glowed red hot amongst the coals and so was fired to a sufficient temperature. After waiting overnight, the pot was retrieved from the ashes and struck with a stick. The pot gave a clear ringing sound indicating it was strong and had no cracks (hollow sounds indicate the opposite). Now I had a small bowl to carry water in.
A larger pot was then made from the same clay. This time the walls of the pot were built up using the coil technique where long rolls of clay were rolled and then squashed onto previous layers. The last layer was pinched outwards to form a pot lip. A lid was made for the pot by making a flat disk of clay with a small handle for lifting. When dried the pot was then fired as before but in a larger pit outside the hut. Again, the pot was covered with wood protecting it from sudden breezes that might cool or heat the pot suddenly, possibly causing cracks. The firing went well and the pot sounded strong when struck.
The pot was then placed on 3 rocks and a fire lit underneath. It took close to 30 minutes to boil this way with lots of sticks. But it did eventually come to the boil. I then made a stove inside the hut. The fire pit was dug and extended into a trench, sticks laid over the entrance and mud mixed from the excavated dirt was then used to form the walls of the stove over the trench. The stove was about 30 cm internal diameter but came in to about 20 cm. Three raised lumps were made on the top of the stove to hold the pot above.
Then the stove was fired. Note that wood can be placed over the entrance of the stove at ground level and lit in a hob firebox like configuration. The flames then get sucked down and then up into the stove. I show this because it’s an easy way to manage the fire without making it too big which might burn the thatch.
When the pot is on the stove, it’s easier just to put sticks straight into the top of the stove between its open top and the sides of the pot. If over stacked with wood, wood gas is produced burning in a second fireball above the stove. It’s best just to keep the flames big enough to surround the pot (to reduce fire hazards). The pot was quicker to come to the boil than over a three stone fire.
The clay here in the new place is good, it didn’t take me long to make pottery here. Notably this clay doesn’t seem to need grog or temper added to it to prevent it from cracking. I think this is due to tiny specs of mica that weren’t present in the clay from my old area. The clay seems stronger and there also seems to be much more of it everywhere. The pot boiled after a while of tending, in future I’ll probably make thinner walled pots so that they boil quicker. The stove was useful for boiling the pot. It also seems to reduce the amount of smoke in the hut and increase the life of the coals in the base so that the fire could be re stoked at a later time."
