Sand and Glass, post 1

Interesting Facts and Figures from the book Sand by Michael Welland.

2009 Michael Welland:

~Earliest glassworks discovered: Nile Delta, 125o B.C.

~Discovery of glass not in Egypt (as Pliny describes in Natural History), but in Mesopotamia.

~Simple beads found in Iraq and Syria from 2300 B.C.

~Most of these beads were made in Venice: 1800's exported 6 million pounds of beads/year

~Resources of copper oxide, gold, and pure copper (additives to create color in glass) determined where the centers of glassmaking developed.

~"Cagoli" is Italian for pebbles. The Ticino river in NW Italy carries quartz glass and pebbles from the Alps which were used to make glass (no longer).

~Receded sea bed in Fontainebleau (outside of Paris) contains tracts of up to 100ft. thick white sand. (current source).

~1739, Jamestown, VA: Caspar Wistar (a German immigrant) brought over German glassblowers and opened a factory in NJ where there was lots of sand and oyster shells.

~The United States consumes well over eleven million tons of glass sand every year."

Welland, M. "Sand: The Never-ending story. University of California Press, 2009.

blown slightly off topic...

(this is a blog post on a blog posts, sorry!)

1. Bldgblog has an interesting post on the book Sand by Michael Welland: http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/vincent-van-gogh-and-storm-archive.html

2. Washington Glass School blog has awesome pictures of the American Craft Council Show. Tommie Rush is selling "Happy Pills" in one photo. Whenever I see pills, it makes me think of snooping in medicine cabinets (a popular theme of TV and movies in my childhood)...makes me want to know who buys these giant glass pills (does it seem to you that Tommie Rush's buyers should be protected under some sort of HIPAA, to protect their privacy?)
http://washingtonglass.blogspot.com/2010/02/running-around-acc.html

3. Mark Hill Collects "Buyer Beware"
http://markhillcollects.blogspot.com/2010/02/beware-online.html