The artisans at Meissen, Europe’s first porcelain manufactory founded in 1710, anticipated aspects of cobalt chemistry that were not treated in the open scientific literature until 50-80 years later. They recorded their experiments in laboratory notebooks that were inaccessible to outside scholars until the 20th century. In this presentation we will discuss two such instances by comparing the archival manuscripts to later publications In his attempt to match the cobalt blue color of Chinese porcelain David Köhler (1683-1723) in 1720 (and probably as early as 1715) described the preparation of a blue pigment that is almost identical to Louis Jacques Thénard’s (1777-1857) preparation of cobalt aluminum spinel reported in the Journal des Mines of 1802. Similarly, in his book of enamel recipes completed in 1731, the Meissen painter Johann Gregorius Höroldt (1696-1775) described a complex process of fractional precipitation to purify cobalt carbonate from cobalt ores. This procedure is identical to Rudolf Abich’s (1738-1809) preparation of pure cobalt carbonate as described in Crell’s Chemische Annalen of 1784. Comparisons of the manuscripts provide us with valuable insights into the differences in the styles of chemical vs artisanal descriptions of very similar laboratory procedures.

Anticipating the turn of the 19th century: Cobalt chemistry recipes from the Meissen archives (1720-1730)

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