‘Unusual excrescences of nature’ : collected coral and the study of petrified luxury in seventeenth-century Antwerp

Many seventeenth-century Antwerp collections contained red coral, both natural and crafted. Also, coral was a pictorial motif depicted by Antwerp artists on mythological scenes, still lifes, paintings of collector’s cabinets, and allegories. This paper provides a ‘biography of coral’ in early seventeenth-century Antwerp to explain the interest in this naturalia. It argues that the interest in coral resulted from the fascination with metamorphoses – in particular the process of petrifaction, which highly interested naturalists, but also had artisanal, mythological, and religious connotations. Antwerp painters, engravers, gold- and silversmiths, jewellers, apothecaries, and collectors were knowledgeable about coral in different ways. Added up, their stories explain the multi-layered meaning of coral that was intrinsic to the value attached to this ‘unusual excrescence of nature’. Coral was indeed many things at the same time: a commodity crafted into jewellery and artefacts, a popular collectable in its natural shape, a motif for Antwerp painters, an essential commodity in the European-Indian trade network, a naturalia associated with classical mythology, a substance associated with the Blood of Christ, and a problematic naturalia that raised questions about classification, origins and natural processes

Fish out of water : collecting aquatic animals in the Early Modern period

Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe had a lively collecting culture. Princes and professors, apothecaries and artists, merchants and physicians: different groups of people became obsessed with collecting. They collected man-made and natural objects: artificialia and naturalia. Various aquatic naturalia belonged to the most fashionable collectables – think of blowfish, sawfish, narwhal tusks, horseshoe crabs, corals, and shells. Most sought after were particularly curious, rare, or exotic objects. But very practical reasons were important too: those specimens easiest to preserve and transport most often ended up in cabinets. The culture of collecting, with its hands-on investigation of naturalia, was crucial for the development of the field of natural history. Besides the preservation of specimens (which could done by drying them or immersing them in spirits), collectors and naturalists understood the importance of good images. Some collectors made beautifully illustrated catalogues to their collections. Others amassed watercolour albums. Still others purchased print series of fish images, a genre that was newly invented in the sixteenth century

Preparation of thermally stable phenylpolysiloxane fused silica capillary columns : optimization and evaluation of the deactivation by capillary GC and solid state 29Si NMR

The deactivation of fused silica capillary columns with a laboratory-made poly-diphenylvinylmethylhydrosiloxane copolymer has been investigated. The deactivation obtained at different temperatures and reaction times is characterized with a dual column capillary GC system [1]. In parallel, the effect of the silylation temperatures and reaction times on the nature, the structure, and the chemical properties of the deactivation layer has also been studied by solid-state 29Si NMR spoctroscopy. A fumed silica, Cab-O-Sil M5, was used as a model substrate for these spectroscopic studies. The deactivated fused silica capillaries show an excellent thermal stability (up to 400°C), a high resistance to solvolysis, and a minimal interaction to various critical test components. A good wettability of the fused silica capillary columns deactivated with this reagent was confirmed by successful subsequent coating with polysiloxanes with different phenyl content