The history and production of pharmacy glassware

Glass was inventedin very ancient times. Its use was first documented in Phoenicia in the Bronze Age, following which itspread to Egyptand the Mediterranean basin, where fragments have been found dating from the4th millennium BC.
Glass is made fromsiliceous sand combined with lime and natron. In antiquity plants made avaluable contribution to the composition of glass by providing the natron. Thiswas obtained from the ash of burned ferns, beech and glasswort.
These raw materials were ground and mixed,then heated to as high as 1500 degrees.
The glasspaste resulting from the fusion could then be either modelled, or poured intomoulds, or blown with a reed togive a rounded form that could then be shaped with tools.

Glass was used tomake instruments and containers foruse in pharmacies. The sixteenth century marked the start of intense productionof glassware for pharmaceutical use that continued for three hundred years. Tuscanyis the Italian region that has the largestnumber of objects and instruments made of glass.

In the province of Arezzoalone there are the three pharmacies in the Franciscan sanctuary of La Verna,the monastery of Camaldoli and the Ospedale Serristori in Figline Valdarno.

Aboca Museum holds a large number of containers and instruments made of glass from different ages in a special room, the phytochemicallaboratory and the nineteenth-century pharmacy.
HERBALS >>

Colour >>

Paper >>

Engraving techniques >>

CERAMICS >>

Moulds >>

GLASSWARE >>

Instruments and Containers >>