50 In 1698 Prince Johann Adam Andreas I von Liechtenstein ordered a microscope and a large burning glass from the Augsburg optician Cosmus Conrad Cuno, to be cut from glass made at the princely glass works at Feldsberg.12 As already mentioned, burning glasses were needed to create high temperatures for transmutation processes. The prince was also offered an arcanum or secret formula for transforming silver into gold.13 In January 1707, the prince’s steward Georg Anton von Fellner reported back on the result of a six-week experiment: ‘At the end of the sixth week, Sigmund took the phials out of the horse manure, mixed the material in them, so long as the colour had not changed, thoroughly with quicklime, put it into a retort and yesterday sublimated the whole over a very strong fire. But nothing except a liquor smelling of spirit of urine was produced; no mercury was to be seen at all. Furthermore, in the matter of what is to be done with the caput mortuum, I shall expect and await Your Serene Grace’s instruction.’14 The experiment had evidently failed, and the decision as to what was to be done with the ‘caput mortuum’, a by-product from the process of producing sulphuric acid, now lay with the prince. 12 See Haupt 2012, 667–8, nos. 2825, 2827. 13 Ibid., 727, no. 2918: ‘Eß befinden sich zwey artisten alhier, welche ein zimment* pulver haben, daß silber durch ein zimment in pures goldt zu transmitieren. Alle drey tag ist die arbeith vorbey, daß cento per cento uber alle unkosten abwürfft in drey tagen.’ (‘There are two artists here who have a Zimment [old unit of measurement] of powder, enough to transmute silver into gold. Every three days the work is completed, so that a hundred per cent of all costs are covered in three days.’) Fig. 4 Johann Friedrich Böttger Gold regulus, presumably 1713 Porzellansammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden Inv. F 389 Fig. 5 Silvered burning mirror from the laboratory of Franz Stephan of Lorraine, 1751 Bronze, silvered Technisches Museum Wien Inv. 10697
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTMyNjA1