October 31, 2017
“Beyond [gold ruby glass’] aesthetic qualities, there is an alchemical connotation: Since ancient Greek times, descriptions of the sorcerers’ stone agree that it was believed to be a red substance and the key to the transmutation of metals, principally the making of gold. Whoever discovered how to color glass red must have thought himself to be on the right track to attaining the ultimate goal of alchemy… Red glass of some sort was produced almost from the time that glassmaking began. Knowledge was gained and then lost, and while there were rediscoveries on several occasions, this glass does not seem to have been produced again until it was revived in Brandenburg in the late 1670s and 1680s. It is here, with the arrival of the alchemist, pharmacist, and glassmaker Johann Kunckel (1637?–1703) in early 1678, that the real story of gold ruby glass begins.”
Source: Corning Museum of Glass