Anyways, in just five short hours I will be on my way to Calgary for the Entertainment Expo and Comic Convention. I have been very busy in the studio and not only do I have Enterprise and Dr. Who beads, but I also managed to create a few dragons, Cthulhu, Mario, and koi beads. If you were lucky enough to get tickets before they sold out, come visit me in booth T-02!!

This year I have decided to support Beads of Courage Canada. Beads of Courage is a Canadian charity that supports children who are coping with serious illness by helping them to record and tell their story of courage through beads. Each bead a child receives represents a treatment, experience, or milestone. A purple heart is given to the child at the completion of their treatments. So, for every heart bead purchased at Comic Con this year, I will donate a purple heart bead in your name to this wonderful program. For those unable to attend, when I return I will add the heart beads to my available work for purchase online and will continue to honour my pledge to donate a purple heart to Beads of Courage for each one purchased.

In all seriousness though, welcome to everyone who found this site through the Calgary Entertainment Expo website. The spike in visitor traffic tells me that I really need to get moving on adding the new content that I have been promising. Now that midterm exams are out of the way, I can work on doing exactly that. I am still learning what all the buttons on my shiny new camera do, but I have been busy in the studio working on new designs for this year’s Calgary Comic Convention. Last year’s limited edition Enterprise beads sold out early, so I have decided to open my website for pre-orders this year. Head on over to my Calgary Expo event posting for more details on the show in general and what I have been working on for the show this year.

New this year: Short on cash? No problem. I now have a credit card processing system! Visa and Mastercard will be accepted for website sales and any festivals or shows that I am exhibiting at.

Also, last year my Enterprise beads sold out early. Missed your chance last year? I will be offering them again this year, however they will still be a limited run. If you don’t want to risk missing out again this year, they are available for pre-sale on this website now! New designs as well as special and custom ordering are also available!

What I am working on (and will be blogging about in the near future):
~ I have a new camera! Time to up my game with my photography.
~ Working on research into precious metals in medieval glass and history of Chinese Paper and Paper Arts.
~ More content on this site!!… Photos of past work, biography, etc.
~ International travel in late 2013 or early 2014.
~ Attending multiple large conventions and festivals in Western Canada.
~ And before all that, passing all my courses… This semester: Operations Management and Managerial Cost Accounting… whoo!

Note: Quad War is a medieval event hosted by the Society for Creative Anachronism and is a weekend long camping event. Non SCA participants are more than welcome to attend, but if you have never experienced the SCA before, I urge you to contact me in advance and I will give you some tips on what to expect and who to talk to for great newcomer information.

So with only a few obvious differences (particularly in the final sentence), I think I did a pretty fine job of it. And, now that I have a full English translation, I can skip right ahead to reading the book and starting to play with glass!

Next update!… My adventures in finding arsenic and mercury sulfides!

(oh, and the left column was my translation)

Today I am both ecstatic and frustrated. After about a year of hurting my brain on trying to translate Ricette Vetrarie del Rinascimento through Babelfish, I did a random google search to see if there was any new discussion or information on the topic. I found two things: First, Fuzzy Lizard Studio is the top few listings when you google “Ricette Vetrarie del Rinascimento”!!! (Go me!)… And second, a professional English translation was released in Europe a few months ago.

So, this project is now on an indefinite hiatus. I have ordered a copy of the translation (which has added illustrations and annotations from the original Italian transcriber) and it should be here in a week or so. If you are interested in getting a copy for yourself, email me and I will forward you the contact information. Also, I have been in email communication with the author, and he has given me some great research contacts here in North America for ancient glass techniques. Time to start saving my cash for buying more books!

When the English translation arrives from Europe, I will go through what little translation I have accomplished in the last year and compare it to his translations. I am very curious to see just how well Babelfish did. I will post my findings under this project page and then close the project as complete. Now to find something else just as crazy to start working on… Perhaps Kingdom level A&S champion?

For example:

Original Italian:
All’occhio di esperti lettori di antiche carte d’archivio non poteva sfuggire che la scrittura dello stesso lo faceva risalire al XVI secolo; in effetti Luigi Zecchin e l’Archivio di Stato di Venezia davano autorevole conferma che la scrittura datava con certezza il testo al 1560 circa.

Babelfish:
All ‘ expert eye readers of ancient cards d ‘ archive could not escape that writing of the same made him go back to the 16th century; in fact, Luigi Masiello and l ‘ Archivio di Stato di Venezia gave an authoritative confirmation that writing dated with certainty the text to about 1560.

My interpretation:
Experts from the ancient archives placed the writing back to the 16th century, and Luigi Masiello and the experts at the Venice State Archives confirmed that the writing dated the text to about 1560.

For more bibliographical information on the original manuscript and the Italian transcriptions, you can visit Google Books or Amazon UK.

The Italian transcripts are 118 pages long, so I will only post my interpretation of Babelfish’s translation.

Glass Recipes of the Renaissance
Transcript from an Anonymous Venetian Manuscript

Introduction

In preparation for the Millennial exhibition of glass art in Murano, held in 1982 at the Palazzo Ducale and Palazzo Correr in Venice, a small group of experts were brought together to review the documentation. It was on that occasion that two manuscript collections of glass recipes came to light which were of great importance for the study of the history of Murano technology since 1500. In the observation of those two collections was discovered the existance of an anonymous manuscript, which is the subject of this study. Experts from the ancient archives placed the writing back to the 16th century, and Luigi Masiello and the experts at the Venice State Archives confirmed that the writing dated the text to about 1560. Keeping in mind, the first glass recipe book – L’arte vetraria by Antonio Neri – was printed in 1612, the anonymous author understood the importance of tempering.

There are many manuscripts of glass recipes prior to that examined here, such as “Secrets to Working Glass” by Antonio of Pisa of the 14th century, the three Florentine recipe books of the 14th and 15th centuries perserved at the Firenze State Archives, the recipe book kept at the Library of the School of Medicine at Montpellier University, and the “Recipe for Making Stained Glass and Enamels in Murano” 1536 – commented on by Luigi Zecchin (Zecchin, 1964; 1987, pp. 247-276).

A few decades later and fundamental for comparison are “L’arte vetraria” by Neri, annotated translations of the same by C. Merret and J. Kunckel, and “Secrets of Enamels – Important Recipes” by Giovanni Darduin, dated 1644, in the Venice State Archives, transcribed and annotated by Luigi Zecchin (1986).

Other notations on glass are in texts relating to topics more extensives such as Schedula diversarum artium, Theophilus of the 12th century; Filarete Secrets for Colors, 15th century Bolognese manuscript in the Libraray of the University of Bologna, De la Pirotechnia by Vannoccio Biringuccio and De re Metallica by Agricola.

Other authors who in antiquity have written about glass are cited in “L’arte vetraria” by Neri, an article about the Torcellana glass workshop of Astone Gasparetto by Rosa Barovier Mentasti, and in various publications of Louis Zecchin’s writings on glass collections and glassmakers of Murano (Zecchin, 1987, 1989, 1990).

The recipes presented in this manuscript are therefore between the 15th century recipe books, the Montpellier Manuscript and Biringuccio’s text, on one hand and the book of Negroes and the recipe book from Darduin on the other. In this perspective, when we examine and evaluate the anonymous recipe book, essential parts are compared with previous and subsequent texts.

This manuscript is 16.5 x 22 cm and is tied in the middle towards the top edge and bottom by two strings. The tethering looks original since there are no other holes on the center fold of the paper.

The manuscript paper has a watermark (print and set off) in the same production manner that has been classified in the Venice over the years 1536-1567. The manuscript consists of forty-seven rectangular cards; the first three, not numbered, contain the recipe index followed by two blank pages and forty-two recipe cards. The first part of the book consists of 38 cards containing 87 recipes. The second part, which differs from the first in hand writing, includes four cards (from 39 to 42) and contains 18 recipes. The forty two recipe cards are numbered in the upper right corner, from 1 to 42.

The index lists all of the recipes. On the left edge of the cards, the recipes are numbered in Arabic numberals from recipe one through recipe 30; then a scribe appears to have changed the numbering system by deleting the number with a stroke or overwriting the original numbering. This designation distinguishes the different recipes on the reverse side of the page with sequential alphabetic letters (A, B, C etc.). The index seems to be ordered with a logic which is different from the sequence of the recipes: it begins with the recipe for salt-alkali and not with that for the sale of glass which is first in the recipe book, probably in an attempt to break the glass recipes into categories (nail polish, false joys, mosaics, preparation of certain raw materials) and colours.

The recipe book is written in red ink for the titles of the recipes and card numbers, while the text and drawings are in black. The ink used in the second part of the recipe book is identical for the headlines and text, and a reddish-black which is different from that used in the first part; otherwise it seems even the pen used was the same (a bit more thin).

A few words on the right margin lower facades (where the ligature is) are washed out. The page margines are wide on the left side, while the writing ends almost at the border on the right side of the page.

A pie chart page and a note regarding calculation are difficult to interpret in the first part, but it seems to refer to the yield of ash leaching.

The anonymous recipe book has upon examination more characteristics of a text, missing only print, like that of a factory recipe book such as Darduin;
containing more text and certainly a large number of recipes for a glassmaker. Other considerations indicated in the recipes; in our opinion the recipes are more plausible in the first fifty four; some recipes are implausible and reported in the notes to the transcript in Italian.

There is a copy of the recipe book from the 18th century bearing the same title: badly written and made in August of 1773. In it, plus various inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the text, it lacks the index and also lists only ninety-two recipes, i.e. the last thirteen.

Next Update: two to three more pages of the introduction