1. On pickles in eighteenth-century cuisine, see Hannah Glasse, The Complete Confectioner, or, the Whole Art of Confectionary Made Plain and Easy (London: J. Cooke, 1770), pp. xxii–xxiii.
2. Graham Hood, Bonnin and Morris of Philadelphia: The First American Porcelain Manufactory, 1770–1772 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972).
3. For British reports on the failure of the Bonnin and Morris manufactory, see Thomas Byerley in Pennsylvania Journal, November 11, 1772; and John Holroyd, Earl of Sheffield, Observations on the Commerce of the American States with Europe and the West Indies (Dublin, 1784), p. 22.
4. Needless to say, the intertwined history of science and porcelain begins in China, not in Europe. For a recent encyclopedic overview, see Rose Kerr and Nigel Wood, Chemistry and Chemical Technology: Ceramic Technology, in Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5, pt. 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
5. On Medici porcelain, see Julie Emerson, Jennifer Chen, and Mimi Gardner Gates, Porcelain Stories: From China to Europe (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 2000), p. 25; Catherine Hess, Italian Ceramics: Catalogue of the J. Paul Getty Museum Collection (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002); Galeazzo Cora and Angiolo Fanfani, La Porcellana dei Medici (Milan: Fabbri, 1986); and Cristina Acidini Luchinat, ed., The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press in association with the Detroit Institute of Arts, 2002).
6. William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 271.
7. On Meissen’s early production, see Ingelore Menzhausen, Early Meissen Porcelain in Dresden (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988).
8. Dennis Haselgrove and John Murray, “John Dwight’s Fulham Pottery, 1672–1978: A Collection of Documentary Sources,” Journal of Ceramic History 11 (1979): 40.
9. Chris Green, John Dwight’s Fulham Pottery: Excavations 1971–79 (London: English Heritage, 1999), p. 3.
10. Ibid., p. 35.
11. Haselgrove and Murray, “John Dwight’s Fulham Pottery,” p. 49.
12. John Frederick Houpreght, Aurifontina Chymia, or, A Collection of Fourteen Small Treatises. . . . (London, 1680), pp. 43–45.
13. Starkey is quoted in Lyndy Abraham, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 5. On Starkey, see also William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chemistry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); and William R. Newman, Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994).
14. D’Entrecolles’s letters are transcribed in William Burton, Porcelain, Its Nature, Art and Manufacture (London: B. T. Batsford, 1906); Louis LeComte, Memoirs and Observations, Topographical, Physical, Mathematical, Mechanical, Natural, Civil, and Ecclesiastical, Made in a Late Journey through the Empire of China. . . . (London, 1698).
15. Macquer is quoted in Papers Relative to Mr. Champion’s Application to Parliament, for the Extension of the Term of a Patent (London, 1775), p. 21.
16. Bruce T. Moran briefly draws attention to the parallel between Meissen porcelain and the Philosopher’s Stone in Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 148.
17. Ben Jonson, The Alchemist (London, 1612), act 2, scene 1.
18. Quoted in David Kubrin, “Newton’s Inside Out! Magic, Class Struggle, and the Rise of the Mechanism in the West,” in The Analytic Spirit: Essays in the History of Science in Honor of Henry Guerlac, edited by Harry Woolf (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978), p. 105.
19. Quoted in John Read, Prelude to Chemistry: An Outline of Alchemy, Its Literature and Relationships (1936; reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1966), p. 28.
20. Pamela H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 4.
21. Quoted in Read, Prelude to Chemistry, p. 130.
22. Hilary Young, English Porcelain, 1745–95: Its Makers, Design, Marketing and Consumption (London: V&A Publications, 1999), p. 46.
23. Frye’s patent is transcribed in Elizabeth Adams and David Redstone, Bow Porcelain (London: Faber and Faber, 1981), p. 70.
24. George Savage first noted the indirection concerning bone ash in the patent in his 18th-Century English Porcelain (London: Spring Books, 1952), p. 125. Security at Meissen was a near-obsession, understandably given that an early defection led to the creation of a competing factory at Vienna. An account of the travels of British merchant Jonas Hanway, on visiting Dresden in the 1750s, includes the following description of the extraordinary measures taken: “Our author had an opportunity of being convinced of the secrecy with which this manufactory is conducted; for there is no admittance into the works without an order from the Governor of Dresden; nor are the workmen ever seen without the gates; for they are all confined as prisoners and subject to be arrested, if they go without the walls: for this reason a chapel, and every thing necessary is provided within.” The World Displayed, or, a Curious Collection of Voyages and Travels, Selected from the Writers of All Nations: in which the Conjectures and Interpolations of Several Vain Editors and Translators are Expunged, Every Relation Is Made Concise and Plain, and the Divisions of Countries and Kingdoms are Clearly and Distinctly Noted; Illustrated and Embellished with Variety of Maps and Prints by the Best Hands (London, 1759–61), p. 49.
25. Neil Kamil, Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the Huguenots’ New World, 1517–1751 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), pp. 76–80.
26. William R. Newman, Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 159.
27. Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998), p. 277. See also Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), chap. 1 passim. For a period description of the process of life-casting, see Godfrey Smith, comp., The Laboratory, or School of the Arts (1736; reprint, London, 1740), pp. 100–106. My thanks go to Robert Barker for this last reference.
28. Mansel Longworth Dames, ed., The Book of Duarte Barbosa: An Account of the Countries Bordering on the Indian Ocean and Their Inhabitants, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1918–21), 2:213–14. Other writers held, similarly, that porcelain was formed from plaster or eggshells pulverized and buried for the purposes of maturation.
29. John Webb, An Historical Essay Endeavoring a Probability that the Language of the Empire of China Is the Primitive Language (London, 1669), p. 112. For other period texts referring to the seashell theory in positive, negative, and uncertain terms, see Pierre d’Avity, The Estates, Empires, and Principalities of the World, translated by Edward Grimeston (London, 1615), p. xiii; William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (London, 1697), p. 409; J. B. Du Halde, The General History of China..., translated by Richard Brookes (London, 1736), p. 310; John Guy, Miscellaneous Selections, or, the Rudiments of Useful Knowledge from the First Authorities.... (Bristol, 1796), p. 246.
30. On Wedgwood and fossils, see Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002), p. 142.
31. Edwin Wolf, “At the Instance of Benjamin Franklin”: A Brief History of the Library Company of Philadelphia, 1731–1976 (Philadelphia: Library Company of Philadelphia, 1976); Henry S. Van Klooster, “The Beginnings of Laboratory Instruction in Chemistry in the U.S.A.,” Chymia 2 (1956): 1–15.
32. William Smith, The Student’s Vade Mecum (London, 1770), pp. 20–21. Smith’s fears were well founded; another of the earliest instructors of chemistry in America, Benjamin Silliman, complained that the discipline was dogged by an association with “alchemy, with its black arts, its explosions, its weird-like mysteries.” Linda K. Kerber, “Science in the Early Republic: The Society for the Study of Natural Philosophy,” William and Mary Quarterly 29, no. 2 (April 1972): 263.
33. Randle Holme, The Academy of Armory (Chester, 1688), p. 308.
34. Hood, Bonnin and Morris, p. 8.
35. Simeon Shaw, The Chemistry of the Several Natural and Heterogeneous Compounds Used in Manufacturing Porcelain, Glass, and Pottery (London: Printed for the author by W. Lewis and Son, 1837), pp. 402–3.
36. On Crisp’s crucible production, see Young, English Porcelain, 1745–95, p. 43; on Wedgwood’s, see Uglow, The Lunar Men, p. 297. For a general account of the scientific aspects of Wedgwood’s production, see Neil McKendrick, “The Role of Science in the Industrial Revolution: A Study of Josiah Wedgwood as a Scientist and Industrial Chemist,” in Changing Perspectives in the History of Science: Essays in Honour of Joseph Needham, edited by Mikulás Teich and Robert Young (London: Heinemann Educational, 1973), pp. 274–319.
37. Johann Rudolf Glauber, A Description of New Philosophical Furnaces; or, A New Art of Distilling, Divided into Five Parts. . . . (London, 1651), quoted in Haselgrove and Murray, “John Dwight’s Fulham Pottery,” p. 35.
38. Douglas McKie, “Priestley’s Laboratory and Library and Other of His Effects,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 12, no. 1 (August 1956): 114–36.
39. For crucibles in the glassmaking and brass industries, see Warren C. Scoville, “Technology and the French Glass Industry, 1640–1740,” Journal of Economic History 1, no. 2 (November 1941): 153–67; Charles E. Hatch, “Glassmaking in Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly 21, no. 2 (April 1941): 119–38; D. W. Crossley, “The Performance of the Glass Industry in Sixteenth-Century England,” Economic History Review 25, no. 3 (August 1972): 421–33; Harry J. Powell, Glass-making in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923); Claus Priesner, Bayerisches Messing: Franz Matthias Ellmayrs “Mössing-Werkh AO. 1780” (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997).
40. “A Letter from Mr. John Clayton, Rector of Crofton at Wakefield in Yorkshire, to the Royal Society, May 12, 1688, Giving an Account of Several Observables in Virginia, and in His Voyage Thither, More Particularly Concerning the Air,” Philosophical Transactions 17, no. 201 (1693): 781–95; “A Continuation of Mr. John Clayton’s Account of Virginia,” Philosophical Transactions 17, no. 205 (1693): 941–48; “A Continuation of Mr. John Clayton’s Account of Virginia,” Philosophical Transactions 18, no. 210 (1694): 121–35. See also Worth Bailey, “A Jamestown Baking Oven of the Seventeenth Century,” William and Mary Quarterly 17, no. 4 (October 1937): 495–500.
41. William Salmon, Medicina Practica, or, Practical Physick: Shewing the Method of Curing the Most Usual Diseases Happening to Humane Bodies. . . . (London, 1692), p. 434.
42. Réamur is quoted in The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politicks, and Literature, for the Year 1763 (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1764), p. 103.
43. F. Severne Mackenna, Chelsea Porcelain: The Triangle and Raised Anchor Wares (Leigh-on-Sea, Eng.: F. Lewis, 1948), pp. 5–6.
44. Young, English Porcelain 1745–95, p. 35.
45. On Simitière, see Quarter of a Millennium: The Library Company of Philadelphia 1731–1981, edited by Edwin Wolf and Marie Elena Korey (Philadelphia: Library Company of Philadelphia, 1981), p. 44.
46. On John Wall, see Savage, Eighteenth-Century English Porcelain, p. 131.
47. For an overview of the phlogiston debate, see Read, Prelude to Chemistry, pp. 120–44; and Marco Beretta, The Enlightenment of Matter: The Definition of Chemistry from Agricola to Lavoisier (Canton, Mass.: Science History Publications, 1993). On the phlogiston controversy in America, see Sidney M. Edelstein, “The Chemical Revolution in America from the Pages of the Medical Repository,” Chymia 5 (1959): 155–79; Robert Siegfried, “An Attempt in the United States to Resolve the Differences between the Oxygen and the Phlogiston Theories,” Isis 46, no. 4 (December 1955): 327–36.
48. Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature.
49. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Held at Philadelphia, for Promoting Useful Knowledge (Philadelphia, 1771), vol. 1 (January 18, 1769–January 18, 1771), p. xi.
50. David Brigham, Public Culture in the Early Republic: Peale’s Museum and Its Audience (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), p. 109.
51. Pascalis was a French chemist who practiced medicine in Santo Domingo and fled to Philadelphia during the island’s slave revolt in 1793. He is quoted in John C. Burnham, Science in America: Historical Selections (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), pp. 55–57. Such optimism on the subject is also seen frequently in geographic surveys of the new nation; Jedediah Morse’s The American Gazetteer (Boston, 1797), for example, noted that a clay found in the riverbanks of Kentucky “might, it is thought, be manufactured into good porcelain.”
52. Thomas P. Smith, A Sketch of the Revolutions in Chemistry (Philadelphia, 1798), pp. 12, 13, 16, 24, 30, 35. See also Edgar F. Smith, Chemistry in America: Chapters from the History of the Science in the United States (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1914). A parallel attack on alchemy appears in the first chemical dictionary, written by Pierre Joseph Macquer (the superintendent of the Sèvres porcelain factory) and translated by James Keir (a close associate of Josiah Wedgwood). See Pierre Joseph Macquer, A Dictionary of Chemistry: Containing the Theory and Practice of That Science . . . (To which is added, as an appendix, A treatise on the various kinds of permanently elastic fluids, or gases [by James Keir]), 3 vols., translated by James Keir, 2nd ed. (London: Printed by T. Cadell, 1977), pp. iv–xii; see also Wilda Anderson, Between the Library and the Laboratory: The Language of Chemistry in Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), pp. 26–30.
53. Encyclopaedia; or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature . . ., 18 vols. (Philadelphia, 1798), 14:297.
54. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (American Magazine, 1769; facsimile reprint, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1969), p. 123.
55. Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris, “The Address of the Proprietors of the China Manufactory,” Votes and Proceedings of the House of Representatives of the Province of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1777), pp. 278–79.
56. Jean Gordon Lee, Philadelphians and the China Trade, 1784–1844 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1984).