2020 Essays

Uses of Sulfur for Casting

Landsman, Rozemarijn; Rowen, Jonah

This essay investigates the significance of sulfur in Ms. Fr. 640, by exploring contemporary artisanal writings and by reconstructing the process of casting in sulfur and wax, using different additives found on fols. 12r and 140v. While casting in sulfur may seem unusual to modern eyes, our experiments show that sulfur, especially in combination with additives such as soot black and “sanguine,” yields results which live up to the author-practitioner’s emphasis on hard, long-lasting and detail-rich casts. Furthermore, they shed light on the author-practitioner’s preoccupation with bubble-like impurities forming in the cast. While Ms. Fr. 640 contains no theorizing about sulfur as alchemical prime matter, we suggest that the material was a metaphor for the process of experimentation itself.