AmbixPub Date : 2024-03-13DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2321688
David E. Lewis
{"title":"Molecular World: Making Modern Chemistry","authors":"David E. Lewis","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2321688","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2321688","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Ambix (Ahead of Print, 2024)","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140127661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-02-01Epub Date: 2024-03-20DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2326802
Marjolijn Bol, Matteo Martelli, Lucia Raggetti, Jennifer M Rampling
{"title":"Changing Colour: Yellow Dyes from Antiquity to Early Modernity.","authors":"Marjolijn Bol, Matteo Martelli, Lucia Raggetti, Jennifer M Rampling","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2326802","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2326802","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140177615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-02-01Epub Date: 2024-02-29DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2309059
Jennifer M Rampling
{"title":"Citrination and its Discontents: Yellow as a Sign of Alchemical Change.","authors":"Jennifer M Rampling","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2309059","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2309059","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Many of the \"signs and tokens\" described in alchemical texts relate to colour, from the Crow's Bill signifying putrefaction to the philosophical solvents disguised as Green Lions, Red Dragons, and Grey Wolves. While the process of yellowing, or citrination, often appears in medieval recipes, it seems to have interested commentators less than the more familiar processes of blackening, whitening, or reddening. Yet beyond these canonical colours, yellowness turns out to be ubiquitous in alchemy and its associated craft practices, both in Latin texts and vernacular translations. This paper uses source criticism and experimental reconstruction to interrogate the role of yellowness at the beginning, middle, and end of practice, focusing on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England. As starting ingredients, yellow vitriol and litharge offered the potential for transmutation but also posed problems for identification and preparation. As an intermediate stage, yellowness offered promising signs of future success, in the form of dramatic colour changes and unexpected products. But yellowness also offered an end in itself, as appears from the many citrination processes attested in recipe collections which aimed to imitate the properties of gold - suggesting that yellowing was prized as a significant indicator of chemical change across diverse areas of craft practice.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139991748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-02-01Epub Date: 2024-03-06DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2311462
Marjolijn Bol, Giacomo Montanari
{"title":"Making Yellows Last with Nitric Acid: Exploring Colour Permanence in Art and Knowledge, 1600-1850.","authors":"Marjolijn Bol, Giacomo Montanari","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2311462","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2311462","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Nitric acid became commonly available in the seventeenth century. Since then, it held the interest of chemists, especially those interested in the art of dyeing. Due to what is now called the xanthoproteic reaction (from Greek <i>xanthós</i>, describing shades of yellow), nitric acid produces a stable yellow colouration in proteinaceous materials, such as wool, silk, and bones. The chemistry of this reaction is well understood today. Less well-known is that it held the interest of dyers in the past. Dyers considered the ability of nitric acid to give a yellow colour to certain substances a solution to giving materials a durable, that is, a lasting, yellow colour. Yellow, indeed, posed a problem in the art of dyeing. Before the discovery of synthetic dyes in the mid-nineteenth century, there were no organic yellow dyes with long-term colour stability. Using historical dyeing manuals and chemistry treatises, combined with our practical engagement with the processes they describe, this paper traces how, between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, dyers explored nitric acid while examining the durability of yellow colourations. Based on these explorations into nitric acid, the chemical arts developed theories about the nature of colour, and about the causes for its relative permanence.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11062327/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140040848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-02-01Epub Date: 2024-01-26DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2307207
{"title":"Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry Award Scheme 2024.","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2307207","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2307207","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139564784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-02-01Epub Date: 2024-03-07DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2309061
Caterina Manco, Matteo Martelli
{"title":"Is Gold Yellow? Plant Dyes and Gold-Making in the Ancient Chemical Arts.","authors":"Caterina Manco, Matteo Martelli","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2309061","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2309061","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Ancient Greek colour terminology captures brightness, light, and brilliance rather than clear-cut portions of the chromatic spectrum, as scholars agree today. This also applies to the rich semantic of yellow, which we investigate starting from a philosophical and theoretical perspective. We then shift our focus to Graeco-Roman technical writings dealing with alchemical dyes, cosmetics, and other crafts that made use of the same set of ingredients and colouring substances. We compile a complete list of yellow-dyeing plants used in antiquity, which will update and enlarge the lists currently available in secondary literature on the topic, such as the seminal catalogue by Robert J. Forbes. Drawing on these data and on laboratory reconstructions, we address two main questions. First, which shades of yellow were usually associated with the colour of gold, and how were these tints produced by ancient craftsmen and alchemists? And second, how did these procedures contribute to the ancient discourse on the colour of gold and its artificial reproduction?</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11062326/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140050963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-02-01Epub Date: 2024-03-01DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2311465
Lucia Raggetti
{"title":"Stolen Horses and Scented Garments: Vegetal and Mineral Yellow in Arabic Technical Literature.","authors":"Lucia Raggetti","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2311465","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2311465","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mediaeval Arabic technical literature shows a keen interest in yellow dyes, paints, varnishes, inks, and even perfumes. Recipes reveal that yellow was viewed as just one step away from gold, with preparations for these two colours often sharing ingredients and techniques. In the unfolding of procedures and applications to different materials, from skin to textiles, Arabic sources also offer a glimpse into daily life and shared tastes, presenting luxury objects along with their imitations. This paper traces the role played by yellow and gold in inks, cosmetic dyes, and coloured, scented fabrics, exploring the textual dimension of these recipes, their technical features, and their social role between the court and the street. It also presents translations of several important recipes for yellow and gold dyes, which illustrate their diversity of applications, while also addressing such material problems as durability and substitution.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11062290/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139998227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-01-30DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2310887
Joe Stadolnik
{"title":"Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature","authors":"Joe Stadolnik","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2310887","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2310887","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Ambix (Ahead of Print, 2024)","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139763529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-01-16DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2296747
Régis Briday
{"title":"Atmospheric Chemistry: A Critical Voyage Through the History","authors":"Régis Briday","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2296747","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2296747","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Ambix (Ahead of Print, 2024)","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139476234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}