Tea at Trianon: How Did Vikings Make Glass Beads?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, October 15, 2022

How Did Vikings Make Glass Beads?

From Archaeology:

According to a statement released by Aarhus University, Gry Hoffmann Barfod and Søren Sindbæk of Aarhus University and Claus Feveile of the Museum of Southwest Jutland analyzed the composition of white beads recovered from an early workshop at the Viking trade center known as Ribe. The study has revealed how the beads were manufactured at a time when glass was a scarce commodity. First, the gold on gilded glass cubes taken from Roman and Byzantine mosaics was salvaged, and then the glass was melted at low temperature. Stirring this molten glass trapped air in the form of bubbles, which turned it opaque. The white glass was finally wrapped around an iron mandrel to form beads. It had been previously thought that Viking craftsmen relied upon white tesserae to produces these beads, but tiny drops of gold trapped in air holes, and the lack of chemical color tracers, offered clues to the process. Traces of gold were also found in deep blue transparent beads found in the same Viking workshop. (Read more.)