PROFESSOR PEPPER & HIS MAGICAL GLASS by Penny Dolan

 

 

Opening up the draft of my neglected historical fantasy, I step once more into that mid-Victorian setting. At once I am faced by a strand that involves mystery, magic and the development of glass. But how, at that particular point in time, do glass and magic connect?  

 

Transparent and pure, glass has long seemed a magical substance. In the furnace, dull sands became a flowing, glowing liquid, hardening again into a solid substance. Glass had been used by alchemists and scientists and, since ages past, offered humans power over light, vision, reflection - and the art of illusion.  As a material, glassbrought sparkle and glamour and luxury. It allowed light indoors, and even, in the windows of cathedrals and chapels, illuminated the heavens and coloured the blessings of God.

 

Better than polished stone or metal, glass could become a mirror, revealing both self and, some said, soul. Superstitions grew. A shattered mirror was rumoured to bring seven years bad luck - the seven years the soul needed to gather itself together again from the fragments - and when death arrived in the chamber, every mirror must be covered in black cloth, lest the soul, as it left the body, fitted into that space behind the glass rather than flying away into the life to come. 

 British governments saw only the quantity of the new paned windows and by 1696, the first Window Tax arrived. The strict and progressive imposition  of the tax led, by 1766, to a spate of walled-up windows as householders tried to avoid the seven-windows-or-more tax ruling.  However, by the time the tax was was removed in 1845, glass had already taken on a new, architectural role within the prosperous cities where elegant shopping galleries were being constructed from glass and ornate cast iron.

 The new arcades, each one containing several little shops, all lit from the front, offered the better class of shoppers protection from the weather as well as places to see and be seen. 

The Soho Bazaar opened in London in 1816, the Burlington Arcade in 1819 and from 1830 onwards, other cities created their own arcades.

 

 

 

 

Glass was finally established as a building material when Paxton’s Crystal Palace, featuring 300,000 tons of plate glass, offered the biggest and grandest bazaar of them all: The Great Exhibition of 1851. As an experience, the Exhibition influenced the design of the new department stores and their celebratory plate glass window displays well into the next century. 

 

 Now, among the many uses of glass in the Victorian era, its role in Magical Illusion has long fascinated me. 

As magic moved from local feasts and show grounds into the gaslit shadows of small theatres, all sorts of lighting effects, illusions and subterfuge suddenly became easier to manage. Magicians, other than with sleight of hand, often relied on reflections and shadows to stage their acts. Now, with the arrival of large sheets of glass, new acts were possible - and so it was that in 1852, Professor John Henry Pepper, English scientist and member of the Royal Polytechnic Institute, demonstrated his famous, theatrical “Pepper’s Ghost”. 

Bsically, the effect is created by using two areas or "rooms". The audience can see inside the main performance "room" - ie the stage - but the second - known as the blue room – was hidden from view at the side.  An enormous, now-available, flat glass plate would be placed carefully at an angle in the main room and at a certain point, the lighting would be altered. At this point the "invisible" screen would reflect whatever was illuminated in blue room. At one the visible room would appear to contain the person or object that was positioned within the brighter-lit blue room. Curtains, drapes and clever lighting effects amplified this popular effect. In December 1862. using this device, there was the first public performance of a scene from Charles Dickens’ The Haunted Man and it was a huge sensation. 

 

The arrival of Pepper’s ghost led to a fashion for short ghostly dramas. Refinements were always being devised: invisible dark-clothed actors manipulatedg white skeletons, phantom swords floated through the air, and disembodied heads and transformations became popular. 

 The other-worldly effect, combined with the growing interest in human spiritual and intellectual powers, proved a huge theatrical success. 

However, Henri Pepper’s Ghost was a troubled creation. 

 

When Pepper tried to register his patent at the Patent Office - as all serious magicians do - he was refused. A Dutch magician, with the stage name Henri Robin, claimed he had demonstrated an identical trick in Paris in back in 1847, although the supposed trick was later replicated and proved unlikely. 

 Meanwhile, in October 1852, a Parisian artist called Pierre Seguin had patented a small polyscope, a children’s portable peepshow toy that worked on the same principle as Pepper's stage version. Pepper and his partner Henri Dircks attempted to patent a similar children’s device in 1863 but Seguin’s earlier claim across both France and Britain was upheld. 

As a partner, Dircks' name was on all the contracts and paperwork, although his passion was in remodelling theatres to show “ghostly phenomena”.  However, after a while he noticed that Professor Pepper’s was the only name appearing on all the publicity material. and trouble followed. Pepper persisted, determined to retain and improve his magical Ghost and in 1862, he added a twist to Dircks’ own 1862 peepshow toy idea.

By altering the angle of the glass and using the orchestra pit as the blue room, Pepper made his own Ghost into a star attraction across a greater range of theatres and space and created a craze for dramatic theatrical ghosts. There was, however, a most interesting side-effect: a national shortage of large panes of plate-glass. 

Writing this post gave me the chance to re-examine Pepper's Ghost but - yet again - I am left with my own mystery to solve. Given that the Ghost is very much a technological creation, is it possible to create a mood of mystery and subtlety in my writing? Can I recreate the magic? One day, I might be able to answer. 

Penny Dolan 

@pennydolan1

ps. If you are at all interested in magicians, tricks and patent wars, do read “Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians invented the Impossible” by Jim Steinmeyer.

George Ravenscroft - 17th Century Pioneer in Glass

by Deborah Swift

I love the fact that writing historical fiction takes me up all sorts of byways. Whilst researching for my new book set in the mid 17th Century, I wondered what sort of glasses they might have drunk from, and whether by then, it would still be pewter or horn. When did glass make an appearance for the everyday person? Not early enough for my book apparently, for though glass for windows and chunky simple cups had been made in England since the 13th Century, the impurities in the glass made it brittle and unsuitable for fine tableware. Fine glass was imported, usually from Venice. But in the later 17th Century a new method was developed by George Ravenscroft - a method that would mean England could produce its own glass to rival that of the Italians.

Anglo-Venetian glass with Dutch engraving - National Gallery of Victoria

George Ravenscroft was a trader in goods such as currants, glass, and lace. During the years he was trading, and before he arrived in London in 1666, he lived in Venice. Being involved in the glass trade, he was able to observe the method used by glassmakers in Italy, but soon came up with his own version of glass manufacture, using a mixture which was produced with a high lead content. Experiments he made between 1674 and 1676 gave a brilliant transparent and hard-wearing heavy glass which we now know as 'lead crystal.'

Secret Formula

The circumstances surrounding Ravenscroft’s role in the invention of lead crystal are not very clear. 17th Century records of the manufacturing process are incomplete, but moreover, Ravenscroft was rather secretive about his ingredients and processes. He was wary, as one might expect, of competitors copying him.

It is thought he had assistance from Sir Robert Plot FRS, who had the idea of using flints from Oxfordshire river beds. In Murano, Italy, where the best glass of the era came from, very expensive white flints from the River Po were used. Historians cannot agree on how Ravenscroft was inspired to use lead in the production of glass. Was it an accident, or had he pinched the idea of adding lead oxides to the glass from the glassmakers of Venice? To add to the confusion, an Italian book about glass making - L'Arte Vetraria, written by Antonio Neri in 1612, was translated into English by Christopher Merrett in 1662. Here's a quotation from the book describing lead glass when molten:

"This sort of glass, lead glass, is so runny that were it not cooled, and taken up by turning to wind a gather, it would be impossible to work. It is so runny that it would not even hold onto the punty, because it is as loose as soup. This arises out of the lead calx causes it to become very fluid."

Crizzling

Adding lead oxide to the glass made it less viscous than ordinary glass when heated. Because of this, it could be worked for longer without re-heating. The early glass Ravenscroft made was subject to developing a crackled surface known as crizzling, (what a lovely word!) caused by too much potash in the mix. But by1676 Ravenscroft had improved the glass, making lead glass, which contained a higher quantity of lead oxide, thus preventing crizzling. Lead glass has a higher refraction that previous English glass, making it sparkle, and ring like a bell if you gently strike the edge.

A well-crizzled decanter from the V&A 

Unique Glass Patent
Ravenscroft was granted a patent from King Charles II in 1674 to be the sole manufacturer of lead crystal in England. His prices were one shilling for a claret glass, rising to one shilling and eight pence for the heavier beer glass. Ale at this time was a strong drink that required a bowl of four fluid ounces, whereas a wine glass held only two. Because of Ravenscroft's invention, the prices of glasses dropped steeply until by the end of the century it was six shillings a dozen.

A George Ravenscroft glass, also in the V&A

Ravenscroft's was a short but glittering career that lasted only five years,as he closed his manufacturing business in Henley-on-Thames in 1679. The following year he joined the Vauxhall glassworks, working with the company until his death in 1683. By the late seventeenth century, the trade in Venetian glass was in serious decline, whilst in England there was a boom in glass manufacture. The English couldn't get enough of this light, clear glass and it was produced in ever-growing quantities to meet burgeoning demand at home and abroad.

Read more about it from Glass Historian David C Watts

Sources:
English Drinking Glasses - L M Bickerton
History of Glass - Dan Klein and Ward Lloyd

Find my books at www.deborahswift.com
Follow me on Twitter @swiftstory
Latest book A Plague on Mr Pepys

Tiny Beauties by Joan Lennon

I remember seeing them first in the old Chambers Street Museum in Edinburgh, before its transformation into the National Museum of Scotland.  Then they were tucked into an old-fashioned display case in a side gallery.  Now they are part of the Grand Gallery's Window on the World - a three storey high Cabinet of Curiosities.  They are the Blaschka models - tiny beauties in glass -

(my photos, taken through glass on a sunny day, but I did my best!)

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, scientists interested in studying hard-to-preserve invertebrate animals and sea plants had to depend on 2D drawings.  The Blaschkas, father (Leopold Blaschka 1822-1895) and son (Rudolf Blaschka 1857-1939), took on the challenge of making 3D educational models in, of all things, glass.  They are painstakingly, astonishingly accurate and they are minute.  Many are smaller than the length of my thumb - the biggest are less than the length of my hand.  And I have dinky hands. 

I visit them every time I go to the Museum, and I would love to see more.  The Blaschkas were commissioned by museums far and wide - Harvard Museum of Natural History, for example, has an entire section dedicated to Blaschka flower models, and the Natural History Museum in London has examples like this utterly gorgeous tiny octopus -

(Wikipedia)

Knowledge of the techniques the Blaschkas used to create these undeniable works of art died with them.  Part of me is sad about that.  But part of me finds it oddly satisfying.  Sometimes mystery can be exquisite too.


P.S. More about the Blaschka story can be found here and here. 
P.P.S. I call dibs on writing the graphic novel version!


Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
Walking Mountain.

Cabinet of Curiosities by Charlotte Wightwick - Murano Glass

This January, I went to Venice for the first time. I have had a fascination with the city since I was a very young child and family friends returned with a Murano glass paperweight for my parents and a small replica Venetian mask for me.

I loved my mask the way that only a small girl can: it seemed to me to be the very epitome of elegance and I could only think that the place it came from must be similarly beautiful. But I found myself fascinated by my parents’ paperweight too, its smooth roundness pleasing in the hand, and the intricate flowers inside a mystery I could not fathom (how had they got there?)

Through school, university and years of novel-writing-research, my love of the Italian Renaissance grew, and with it a desire to see Italy for myself, yet in recent years I have prioritised visits to other cities: Florence, Rome, Milan.

Eventually, I had to take the plunge: would I love Venice as much as I had dreamed as a child?

The answer, you may be glad to know, is yes: like thousands before me, I fell immediately and entirely in love with La Serenissima. The sense of wonder John Julius Norwich describes in the introduction to his History of Venice was very much with me as I explored the city from the canals and bridges, or wandered its tiny, winding streets.

The Grand Canal, Venice 2017

In Venice, more than anywhere else, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. However majestic the churches, however magnificent the palazzi, however dazzling the pictures, the ultimate masterpiece remains Venice itself.

Murano, Janury 2017

Which brings me to this month’s item in the Cabinet of Curiosities. Sadly, the Venetian mask of my childhood is long gone, lost to who-knows-what Marie Kondo-style cull, and I suspect my parents wouldn’t be too keen on my stealing their paperweight. So, I just had to buy my very own piece of Murano glass. This proved surprisingly difficult.

Murano, one of the islands in the Venetian lagoon, has been a world-renowned centre of glass-making for centuries. All of Venice’s glass-blowers were relocated there in the thirteenth century, initially as a protection for the rest of the city against fire, an occupational hazard when dealing with molten sand. When the Murano craftsmen discovered the secret of making first clear glass, and later some of the best quality mirrors available in Europe, this segregation allowed the notoriously controlling Venetian government to maintain a monopoly on both the items and the men, punishing runaway glass-makers severely.

Today, Murano glass remains world-famous, although much of the glass available to tourists is reportedly imported cheaply from China. This, however, was not my biggest problem when it came to buying my very own piece of Venetian history.
 

Murano glassware, photo credit Daniel Ventura

Nor was the problem merely one of price (although I did have to put down the 700-euro wine-glass I was happily waving at my friend and revise my plan of buying six of them…) It was more fundamental than that. Like Jan Morris, I think

that almost everything they make is, at least to my taste, perfectly hideous…

Eventually, I found what I was looking for: a necklace (within my price range!) that would be a memory of a beautiful city, a personal symbol to me of my own past and of my love of history, and a thing of beauty in its own right.

My necklace! I think its pretty....

Sources:

• Jan Morris, Venice, Faber & Faber (1960, revised 1993)
• John Julius Norwich, A History of Venice (1977, reissued 2003)
• Il Museo del Vetro (Glass Museum, Murano) http://museovetro.visitmuve.it/

Photo credits:

• Charlotte Wightwick unless otherwise stated

THE GLASS BEAD (GUESSING) GAME, by Jane Borodale

I think it’s partly the mystery, the unknoweableness of the past that makes it so compelling - isn't it? And why is it that some objects from the past can seem so much more peculiarly intense than others? It’s as though along the way they’ve somehow absorbed tiny aspects of previous lives or previous contexts and concentrated something of those existences into an actual, physical potency. An object like this rare 17th-century English glass beadwork basket, currently on display at the Holburne Museum in Bath, certainly has that:

I was quite taken aback by its charisma – if an object could have such a thing – when I saw it last week, laid in its display case, where the museum has an urgent appeal for donations towards its purchase. At first glance it looks quite mild; pretty enough, a fine, colourful object made painstakingly with skill and quality materials. But look more closely and abruptly it seems crawling with verdant nature, almost disturbingly intense, like a vivid dream of a sampler or tapestry half-manifesting into an animate state. I’m not exaggerating – it really does have a spooky, hyperreal quality.

It’s made of small beads of glass, coral and wood that are threaded in sequence onto fine wires and sewn into place on the wire mesh frame of the tray-shaped basket. It depicts three figures standing beside a turreted castle. Tumultuous clouds, in twisting beady ribbons of blue and white like a Van Gogh painting, scud across a swirling, sunny sky above them. The pastoral scene is crowded with flowering and fruiting plants, dotted with creatures and cross-hatched with beadwork.

 

Catherine of Braganza by Jacob Huysmans

The figures are believed to represent King Charles II with his Queen, Catherine of Braganza, attended by a lady-in-waiting – and it’s likely to have been made in about 1665, in celebration of their marriage and the restoration of the monarchy. Catherine of Braganza was a long-suffering though loyal and loving wife. Daughter of the king of Portugal, she endured three miscarriages (never producing an heir to the throne), the famous Popish Plot led by Titus Oates, plus the ignominy of the existence of a string of the king’s mistresses.

Barbara Villiers by Henri Gascar

One such prominently favoured mistress was Barbara Palmer, nee Villiers. It would have been impossible for Catherine to ignore her presence, as Charles gave her the position of the queen’s Lady of the Bedchamber. (Barbara later gave birth to Charles’s illegitimate son and was made a duchess.) Could she possibly have a similarity of feature to the third figure in the bead tableau - she certainly caught the public imagination, is it inconceivable that she has a subtle mention in this beaded portrait too? 

The glass beads themselves are beautiful, still rich in colour (where a sampler of the same period would be faded to more muted colours). They were mostly likely imported from Venice and the Netherlands, and the head and hands of the King and Queen are of the finest quality lampwork.

It’s probable that whoever made this basket was little more than a child herself – young educated girls in the 17th century made samplers and were taught fine needlework as a matter of course – but this seems like a very special example. How did she learn to bead so ambitiously, with so much craftsmanship? How long did it take for her to finish the object, and what happened to it afterwards – was it a gift for an occasion, a wedding or christening perhaps? Tessa Murdoch of the V&A describes the basket as being, ‘…in astonishing condition and a remarkable testimony to the domestic needlework skills of women and teenage girls.’

It’s very satisfying to imagine the maker plotting her design, waiting for her order of beads to arrive, impatiently spilling them out of their packets, gloating over them and letting them run through her fingers like bright seeds or beans. It’s hard not to wonder where and in whose house was the finished thing proudly displayed – in front of a window, maybe, glinting in sunlight, or on a candlelit table for visitors to admire. And above all, who was she, the maker? Likely we’ll never know, but then sometimes the best thing about history is the mystery, and the sheer guessing-game nature of it.

So! Here’s where you could come in. The Holburne Museum in Bath is appealing to acquire this basket for its permanent collection. They need to raise £6,000 through public donations to match another £78,000 being sought through grants – and the clock is ticking as the deadline to raise the cash is July!

The DONATE program enables people to make contributions of £1 or more via smartphones, when and where they please. Click here to donate now. If the Holburne can secure enough money, it will be the only place nationally to have a beadwork basket on permanent display. (Otherwise, it’s very likely to leave the country…)