Raw materials and art – 19. Pewter and Jean Treck

Switzerland is a hub for commodity trading. Did you know that this activity represents 4% of Swiss GDP, and even 22% of tax revenue for the canton of Geneva. This week we will discuss the topic of pewter. We will see how Herodotus, Strabo and Pliny the Elder describe it. Finally, we can admire a painting entitled: Still life with glass of wine, pewter jug and other objects by Jan Trek (1605/1606-1652) which is kept in the National Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Herodotus

Herodotus (480 BC – 425 BC) describes pewter in this way. He has vaguely heard of the Cassiterides Islands:

“And I don’t know of the existence of Cassiterides islands, where the tin would come from. For this one, his very name – Eridanus – is denounced as being a Greek and not a barbarian name, coined by some poet; for these, however much I give my care to the question, I cannot hear anyone who has seen it with their eyes say that there is a sea at these confines of Europe. But it is a fact that pewter and amber come to us from halfway around the world”

Strabo

Strabo (60 BC – 20 AD) is more specific in his text, The Cassiterid Islands (p. 524):

“The Cassitérides islands are ten in number, north of the port of Artabres, and in the open sea, all very close to each other… One of them is deserted. The others are inhabited by men wearing black clothes… They live on their wandering cattle… They possess tin and lead which they trade…”

Pliny the Elder

Here is how Pliny the Elder (23 – 79) describes this metal:

“The liquid that flows first in the furnaces is called tin; the one that sinks second, silver; what remains in the furnace, galena, which is the third constituent part of the calcined ore. This galena, itself subjected to fusion, gives black lead with a waste of two-ninths (150).

XLVIII. (XVII.) Tin, applied to copper vessels, removes their coppery taste, and prevents verdigris from forming in them; the weight of the vase, singular thing, does not increase. One made formerly, as we said it (XXXIII, 45), in Brindes, with the tin, of the very estimated mirrors, until everyone, even the servants, started to make use of silver mirrors. Today pewter is counterfeited by mixing a third of white copper and two of white lead; it is also counterfeited by melting white lead and black lead together, pound for pound. Some people today call this mixture silver pewter. Tertiary pewter is also called pewter in which a third of white lead out of two of black lead enters…”

Still life with wine glass, pewter jug and other objects from Jan Trek

We can admire a painting entitled: Still life with glass of wine, pewter jug and other objects by Jan Trek (1605/1606-1652) which is kept at the National Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza.

For more pewter trivia:

Raw materials, from a different angle – 7. Pewter

In the same series, “Raw materials and art”: