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Metallurgy
Published in Andrew N. Sherwood, Milorad Nikolic, John W. Humphrey, John P. Oleson, Greek and Roman Technology, 2019
Andrew N. Sherwood, Milorad Nikolic, John W. Humphrey, John P. Oleson
A mineral called mercury, which is poisonous and always liquid, is found in the veins of silver [in Spain]. It is a poison to everything and ruptures pots by permeating them with destructive decay. Everything except gold floats on it; mercury attracts gold alone to itself. Therefore, it purifies [gold] very well, since it expels all other impurities when repeatedly shaken in clay pots. To separate the mercury itself from the gold, once the foreign matter has been discarded, it is poured out onto leather skins through which it percolates gradually like sweat and leaves behind pure gold. And so, when copper things are gilded, an undercoat of mercury beneath the gold-leaf holds it with the greatest tenacity…. Otherwise, mercury is not found in large quantities.
Environmental Alchemy: Mercury-Gold Amalgamation Mining and the Transformation of the Earth
Published in Ambix, 2023
The sheer scale of fire-gilded output from the ancient world to our present time is astounding.32 The Romans and Hellenistic Greeks fire-gilded jewellery and statuary.33 Workshops throughout India, China, and Southeast Asia produced monumental golden statues of the Buddha for over a thousand years.34 The twelfth-century manual, De diversis artibus (“On Diverse Arts”) provides recipes for fire-gilded metalwork, to create engoldened objects for use in Christian worship.35 Early modern European elites paraded in steel armour elaborately decorated with fire-gilding.36 Versailles stands as a European fire-gilded colossus fashioned from gold, mercury, and base metal. A constellation of fire-gilded domes gleam golden across Eurasian skylines: Eastern orthodox churches, Islamic minarets, Sikh temples. The Morimoto workshop in Kyoto, Japan, a family-run business in operation since the nineteenth century, continues to practice the art of fire gilding in preserving Japanese cultural heritage, reproducing and restoring Shinto ceremonial utensils and architectural metal fittings and decorations in shrines.37 Nepalese workshops continue to produce artifacts and religious statuary according to an ancient recipe: combine gold with mercury (1:4 or 1:5 ratio) to create a metallic paste, rub this paste repeatedly over the object to be gilded (copper, brass, silver), gently and evenly heat it to vaporise the mercury, and lastly, burnish.38
Metals as Living Bodies. Founts of Mercury, Amalgams, and Chrysocolla
Published in Ambix, 2023
Vincenzo Carlotta, Matteo Martelli
Gold-mercury amalgams were also used to gild metals such as silver and copper-alloys. Depending on the ratio between the two metals, the amalgams could be either pulverulent masses or kinds of paste. The paste was spread over the metals (in particular, silver or copper) as a paint; the mercury was then driven away by heating, leaving a thin coat of gold on the surface.50 In some cases, mercury could simply act as a glue used to apply gold leaves on the surface of the metallic objects to be gilded.51
Particle-in-cell simulation for experimental ion acceleration by fs laser-generated plasma
Published in Radiation Effects and Defects in Solids, 2019
The gold foils were placed on a metallic frame holder consisting of many holes in a high conductive gilded copper. All holes present 1 mm of diameter of frontal face, 3.8 mm of diameter of the rear face, a metal thickness of 2 mm, and a conical aperture of 35°. Target surfaces were flat and strongly attached to the metallic holder surface, in which uniform bonding and geometry were checked using an optical microscope.