No abstract

The study deals with the chemical composition of samples related to the production of a blue pigment/smalt. The samples examined come from the regions of Soví huť and Horní Blatná (north‐west Bohemia) dating to the 16th and 17th centuries. These locations are often mentioned in relation to the discoverer of smalt production technology: Christopher Schürer. The aim of the study is to evaluate the chemical composition of samples from both localities as well as with respect to the ores occurring in the given regions. The samples can be divided into two basic groups. The first clearly represents smalt (potassium glass coloured with cobalt), while the second apparently constitutes the samples of the so‐called ‘speiss’ (an aluminosilicate mass with metallic compounds). The analysis of the smalt confirmed the representation of minor elements bismuth and nickel (always) and uranium and molybdenum (rarely), which are found in Co ores from the Ore Mountains. The paper is the first to present the composition of actual blue pigment finds originating directly from the production sites, while the available literature has so far only reported the results of analyses of the pigments already used when referring to the Ore Mountains.

The Bohemian historical glasses have been neglected and have not been in focus of Archaeometric studies so far. Potassium-calcium wood ash glasses, produced in Bohemia and Moravia, from the beginning of the 14th century to the first half of the 18th century, are chemically different from the glasses produced in the same period in Western Europe. There are no written sources for glass batch recipes for Gothic (14th–1st half of 16th c.) and Renaissance (16th–17th c.) glass, while there are only few for the Baroque (end of 17th–18th c.) glass recipes. Systematically investigating the chemical composition and typology of archaeological glasses, we have chosen to reconstruct the glass recipes of potassium-calcium glasses from the three periods. In this study, the glass recipes (the ratio of the raw materials) were calculated based on the chemical composition of the historical glasses studied by X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) and Scanning Electron Microscopy/Energy Dispersive System (SEM/EDS). The composition of the authentic natural raw materials was studied by XRF and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD): sand or quartz pebbles, beech ash and potash, limestone, NaCl, and As2O3. Model glasses confirmed our presumption of gradual development in the Bohemian glass batch recipes, which used very simple raw materials ratios.

The study deals with the development of the chemical composition of blue glass from the 13th to the 19th century in the region of Bohemia (Central Europe). Nearly 100 glass samples (colourless, greenish, and blue) were evaluated by an XRF method to distinguish the colouring components of blue glass. As early as in the 13th century, blue glass based on ash containing colouring ions of Co and Cu was produced here. To achieve the blue colour of glass, a copper-rich raw material was most likely applied. This information significantly complements the existing knowledge about glass colouring in the Middle Ages, as the glass of later periods was typically coloured with raw materials containing cobalt.

High-level radioactive wastes can be safely immobilized in alkali-aluminoborosilicate glass. To reduce the cost of the vitrification process, the waste loading should be maximized. This can be done by optimizing the process using mathematical modeling. The main objective of our work was to determine one of the necessary inputs for the mathematical model, which is the effect of temperature and composition on the concentration of spinel crystals and their size. We prepared six glasses with a different content of Li+, Na+, Mg2+, Ni2+, Cr3+, and SiIV and studied the effect of composition on the temperature dependence of spinel equilibrium concentration in glass by X-ray powder diffraction. The size of crystals was determined using optical microscopy. It was found that the temperature effect on spinel concentration significantly increased as the content of Ni2+ or Mg2+ in glass increased and slightly decreased as the content of Cr3+ increased and Li+ and Na+ content decreased. Both Ni2+ and Cr3+ acted as nucleating agents, producing a huge number of tiny spinel crystals (∼2 μm). In particular, Ni2+ seems to very significantly facilitate spinel crystallization.