I, Ennion, Master of Fire

I, Ennion, master of fire, put my signature to the products of my workshop.  I, Ennion, master of fire, created this blue two-handled cup from earth, fire, and salt.

Two-handled blue glass cup signed by Ennion made in a Syrian or North Italian workshop
2nd quarter of the 1st c. CE.  Blown in a four-part moldMuseoArcheologicoNazionale di Adria 

Fire

And today I, Ennion, will tell you the secrets of fire and how it purifies the base materials of the world. Fire, is one of the two great cosmic agents. The other is water. Fire, hot and dry, present in the sun, in volcanoes, in the kitchen, in the workshop, is a thing that can burn, combine, flare, and die if it is not fed.

Fire perfects things. In the vegetable kingdom, the fire of the sun ripens seeds to fruits. In the animal kingdom, the fire of the body ripens seeds of the male to fruits of the loin in the womb of the female. In the kitchen, the fire of the oven ripens breads and pastries to fruits of the oven. 

This traditional bread oven in Guevea de Humboldt, Oaxaca, Mexico bulges like the body of a woman on her back about to give birth. Lon&Queta, Flickr, Creative Commons

Water, cold and wet, which we see in the rain, ocean, in the rivers, in the kitchen, in the workshop, is a thing too.

Like fire, water purifies, cleansing away dross, revealing perfection.

In mineral kingdom are four main classes of things: stones, salts, sulfurs, and metals.  All of the classes are rich in the cold, dry element, earth. Each class in the mineral kingdom reacts differently to fire and water.

Stones and earths

The first class in the mineral kingdom is the class of stones or earths. Stones and earths are found everywhere; they are the solid ground on which we walk. Huge rocks, garden soil, potter’s clay, builder’s limestone, the sand I use in my workshop, all are stones and earths.

Cold, wet water disaggregates many stones and earths to watery mud. When the water is removed from mud by the fire in the sun, they return to stone. This is what we call concretion.

We imitate concretion in the workshop. Potters add water to clay with water, they form a vessel, then they concrete it in the oven’s fire.

Hot, dry fire does not change most earths.  I will return to the exceptions.

Salts

The second class in the mineral kingdom is salt.  Salt is found where seawater has evaporated; we call this sea salt. It is found where lakes or rivers have dried up; we call this natron, the salt from Wadi El Natrun in Egypt that I use for my glass. Salt is found deep in the earth; we call this rock salt. Sometimes salt is figured as crystals, sometimes is is colored, sometimes it is transparent.

When we add water to salt, it melts into the liquid.  When we remove the water with fire, the salt returns to its original state.  This is what we call congelation. Some call salt congealed sap, as they call ice congealed water.

When we combine fire and salt, the salt colors the fire blue, or green, or other vivid colors.  The salt survives unchanged in the fire.

We imitate this in the kitchen, giving savor to bland foods, and in the sacrifice, throwing salt on the flames.

Salt has other marvelous properties.  Packed on dead creatures from the animal and vegetable kingdoms, even the bodies of pharoahs, natron preserves them from corruption. Yet it itself grows more readily than other materials in the mineral kingdom.

Sulfurs

The third class in the mineral kingdom is sulfur. Sulfur, oily and bituminous, is seen around volcanos, coal, oil sands, and tars. It contains fire, the spark of life.

Cold, wet water does not change sulfurs.

Hot, dry fire combines with sulfurs to burn brightly.

Metals

The fourth class in the mineral kingdom is metal. Metal is found pure as gold. It is more often found combined with earth, like silver ore or copper ore.

Cold, wet water does not act on metal.

Hot, dry fire acts on metals, melting them, separating earthy dross from pure metal.  When the fire is removed, the melt congeals to solid metal.

We imitate this in the smithy. The smith harnesses the power of fire to extract pure metals from their earthy matrix, to bring them to perfection.

I, Ennion, Maker of Glass, the Fruit of the Fire

So I, Ennion, in my workshop make glass, the fruit of the fire.  I combine sand, from the class of the stones and earths, with natron, from the class of the salts, and employ fire as an agent to melt the sand.  It removes the earthly dross.  When fire leaves the melt, it congeals to brilliant glass, translucent like water or like the crystal salt.  Thus I take the basest of things, an earth, and transform it by art into a perfect glowing fruit of the fire.

I am Ennion, Maker of Glass. I am Ennion, who by Art makes Glass that outshines Nature.

Renaissance Ideas on Fire, the Mineral Kingdom, and Glass

In Vannoccio Biringuccio, himself a member of a guild, broke with the long tradition of keeping technical knowledge secret and published De la Pirotechnia (on techniques using fire) in 1540. Although its main focus was  metallurgy, he also discussed glass.  

Chemical Heritage Foundation, Wikimedia Commons

Biringuccio said of glass that it “is one of the effects and real fruits of the art of fire, because every product found in the interior of the earth is either stone, metal, or one of the semi-minerals.  Glass is seen to resemble all of them, although in all respects it depends on art.” 

In 1612, Antonio Neri, in his manual on glassmaking that was to be the standard for 200 years, De Arte Vetraria, wrote:

“Without a doubt, glass is a true fruit of the art of fire, as it can so closely resemble all kinds of rocks and minerals, yet it is a compound, and made by art.”

Flickr. Creative Commons

Source: Conciatore: Art of Fire (see below)

Origins of this post

This is a really geeky post.  It’s the third one linking the art of fire in glass and baking.  Ennion was a glassmaker in the eastern part of the Roman Empire who took the unusual step of signing his works.

These signatures suggest that he was a proud man of some education. So I thought it might be entertaining to try laying out what he thought he was up to. I don’t buy the supposition that ancient craftsmen (including cooks) were mere “empirics.” I think many of them pondered what they were doing.

And here It turns out that here my earlier specialty, the history of the earth sciences, overlaps with the history of the use of fire in glass and in cooking.

The classification of the mineral system discussed here persisted with few changes until the late eighteenth century. Linnaeus, for example, repeats it largely unaltered.  It lingered on even longer than that.

If, like me, you find getting inside the mind of long-deceased peoples as intriguing as entering the imagined worlds of the science fiction writer, then this will appeal to you.

References

Rachel Laudan, From Mineralogy to Geology: The Foundations of a Science, 1650-1850. University of Chicago Press, 1987, chapter one.

Paul Engle, who translated Neri’s book, has a delightful blog Conciatore: The Art of Fire that explores the world of Antonio Neri. (Conciatore, by the way, refers to an alchemist specialising in making glass from raw, not recycled, materials).  I’ve learned a lot from his blog over the past couple of years. Many of the posts have a direct relevance to the history of cooking.

C. Anne Wilson, Water of Life: A History of Wine-Distilling and Spirits 500 BC to AD 2000. Prospect Books, 2006.  I add this book by one of the leaders of the Leeds group of food historians because it is in many ways complementary. She tries to understand what thoughtful people in the ancient world thought about a watery liquid (distilled wine) that was also a fire. It’s a riot of a journey through purifying rituals, baptisms by water and by fire, and gnostic thought.

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