Always Expect the Unexpected.

I think I mentioned more than once that one thing that I really like about this line of work is that you can always expect something unexpected to come up. Case in point?

I've recently learned about a non-toxic stand-in alloy for quicksilver, and just ordered some for the upcoming Textile Forum. Why? Because there's a find of artificial pearls embroidered onto a tablet-woven band, and we're planning to try and find out how they might have been made.

There's an analysis of the remnants (which is mostly plaster and some protein), and there's a few surviving recipes from the late Middle Ages. Those quite often contain some base material like ground-up soft stone, egg white as protein, and... quicksilver. (Some also have fun stuff like the bones from the skulls of carp, and young doves to put the half-ready pearls in, then to be wrapped in bread dough and baked... but we'll stay with the simple stuff.)   

So. While I'm all for keeping as close to the original as possible, using real quicksilver for our trials was out of the question. On the other hand, though, the fact that it appears in a number of the recipes hints toward it having an actual function in them... so it felt like not the best option to just omit it. To my great happiness, there's a new alloy of different metals that is used to replace quicksilver these days. The trade name is "Galinstan", it's liquid at room temperature, it looks silvery, and we'll see if it will do the trick.

Now to organise and order the rest of the stuff that we'll need... and then on to the normal, boring housekeeping stuff like book-keeping.