Hey dear community, I hope you all have a weekend that is full of interesting experiences and that you are all doing well in general! In this article, I would like to talk a little about alchemy and shed light on an important topic related to it.
Matching to the alchemy, you can see here different minerals as well as a mortar mill and I have specifically decided to go into one of the basics and describe what the most important utensils of the old alchemists were. One of the most important prerequisites were, of course, writings in which the recipes can be found in order to be able to carry out the experiments or production processes without complications and also a secure place was needed and the alchemists were considered very adaptable and had a diverse equipment. Which tools have been used depends on which alchemists experiments have just been carried out and in addition to the required raw materials such as chemicals, metals, spices, pigments and also the different elements were also of great importance and for most experiments fire or water were needed. In order to crush the raw materials, a mortar mill was usually used which is also considered the predecessor of the mills and in an old laboratory there was usually a special oven which was also known as athanor and the special thing was that they could adjust the heat and could cook substances even for weeks in a closed container without evaporating the important active ingredients. For the different steps, it was very important to use the appropriate containers, which were mostly made of glass and were resistant to heat and vessels were made in different shapes in which the substances were separated, mixed or evaporated and very important were also filters with different meshes to sift out unwanted materials from the liquids. For the different work steps, there were different variants of vessels which were often built in such a way that they could be combined to combine several steps or make things like filtering easier and an interesting fact is that in the language of the alchemists the used utensils have often been named after animals.
Important was a tool for cupellation with which it was possible to separate metals and also for analytical purposes it was important, for example, to be able to measure the content of certain precious metals or to clean metals. For alchemical experiments, the right protection was also of great importance and it is assumed that when they have worked with toxic substances, some of these experiments took place outdoors and cloths were often used as a protective mask and it was also important to regularly clean the used vessels and to pay attention to the cleanliness of the general preparation. Brooms or cloths were typically used for cleaning and also daily utensils were also needed for the experiments which were also important for cooking, such as plates, knives, funnels, or other dishes, and also for the storage of substances or raw materials that were used for the experiments, vessels were needed that had to be airtight. From old traditions it is clear how diverse the equipment was and in an alchemist laboratory there were numerous glasses with raw materials plus the required utensils and of course also important were things in which the experiments were recorded in writing and without light the work would have become nothing, so candles or other light sources were also of great importance. I hope I was able to give a good impression which things were of great importance for the old alchemists and I also created some illustrations of different laboratories that are supposed to highlight the topic a little bit better.
Thanks a lot for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about alchemy! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens and created the others with AI!