Inês Coutinho

Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa · Departamento de Conservação e Restauro (Department of Conservation and Restoration)

The present work aims to study the glasses commonly named crystal glass produced in Portuguese factories from the 18th to the 20th centuries through their arcana or batch books. Recipes for colourless crystal glasses were selected, analysed and reproduced in the laboratory. Five recipes were chosen from the Marinha Grande arcanum, five recipes from...

Conservation and restoration on archaeological objects in glass often involve the removal of materials from previous restorations and comprise a deep knowledge about present and past methodologies. This article presents a literature survey and critical analysis of the main materials used in the different stages of intervention: cleaning, consolidat...

A set of 14 glass fragments and production remains dated to the 16th and 17th centuries was collected during rescue archaeological works conducted in Granada, Spain, and was characterised by µ-PIXE. This preliminary study constitutes the first analytical approach to glass manufacturing remains from a Spanish production dated to the early-modern per...

Portuguese archaeological excavations dated to the 17th century onwards are extremely rich in glass artefacts, with this being a reality from the north to the south of the territory. Contrasting with this reality, no glass production locations from this period have been discovered or excavated so far, which makes the provenance attribution a challe...

A importância do vidro enquanto material para uso na indústria e nas artes não pode ser subestimada. Ainda assim, é preciso lembrar que o vidro, no século XVIII, foi um dos materiais mais desejados por colecionadores e ainda está, até hoje associado à demonstração do estatuto social. No entanto, a história da produção industrial de vidro, do século...

In the 18th century, glassmaking knowledge was spreading and more small-scale glass factories emerged, whose success depended on the experience and knowledge of the glassmakers who wrote down their recipes and experiences in the arcana. The arcanum presented dates from the 19th-20th century and uses chemical formulae in its annotations, which raise...

This paper provides an overview of an important glass decorative technique of the Renaissance: the pick-up decoration, including millefiori and splashed technique. Different subjects of investigation are linked: I) history and nomenclature, II) production technique, III) a survey of literature on archaeological findings, and IV) chemical compositio...

The individual calls for PhD Research Scholarships from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology are currently open and close on the 31st of March 2020. I am looking for a PhD candidate to develop a project on medieval glass found in Portugal. The abstract of the project with other details can be found in the attached pdf. The candida...

The individual calls for PhD Research Scholarships from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology are currently open and close on the 31st of March 2020. I am looking for a PhD candidate to develop a project on medieval glass found in Portugal. The abstract of the project with other details can be found in the attached pdf. The candidate...

Combining a stylistic approach with chemical analyses and focusing not only on composition but also on production technology, this research aims to identify possible centres of post-medieval production of glass as well as decorative production techniques used in stained glass, in particular the grisaille. The use of several combined analytical tech...

Os vidros millefiori (termo italiano que significa mil flores), são característicos por serem decorados com finas fatias de canas de vidro que, geralmente, têm uma decoração concêntrica visível em secção transversal. Embora sejam considerados artefactos muito raros, estes vidros são dos mais emblemáticos da produção Veneziana do Renascimento. Além...

Among the Santa Clara-a-Velha Monastery finds, one of the largest archaeological glass assemblages unearthed so far in Portugal dated to the early modern period, a blue fragment decorated with enamels and depicting a triumphal procession scene stood out. In this paper, the result of the study performed to this small fragment related to the occupati...

The Italian word millefiori literally means “thousand flowers” and encompasses glass objects whose surface is decorated with multi-coloured slices of glass canes, usually having concentric patterns. The use of canes is first related to mosaic glass technique, one of the most ancient glass working techniques. During the Renaissance, Venetian glassma...

Glass crystal models arrived in Portugal around the late 19th century, when high schools, universities, and polytechnics were gradually provided with teaching collections to support science education. Therefore, they are an important material evidence of teaching methodologies of mineral and geology science in the 20th century. The Passos Manuel hi...

Combining a stylistic approach with chemical analyses and focusing not only on composition but also on production technology, this research aims to identify possible centres of post-medieval production of glass as well as decorative production techniques used in stained glass, in particular the grisaille. The use of several combined analytical tech...

O Departamento de Conservação e Restauro e a Unidade de Investigação VICARTE - Vidro e Cerâmica para as Artes, em parceria com o Museu da Cidade de Almada, convindam-vos para a inauguração da Exposição "Uma História Engarrafada: Vidro utilitário do século XVIII de Almada", que terá lugar no dia 9 de Junho às 16h30, no Museu da Cidade de Almada. Es...

A set of 46 fragments decorated with the filigree technique were unearthed in Lisbon and dated to the 16th and 17th centuries. The aim of this investigation is to combine the archaeometric study of the glass together with the technology used to produce these beautiful and luxury items, in order to discuss their probable provenance. The glass compos...

The main purpose of this research is to understand the production of glass in Portugal during the 18th and the 20th centuries with the aim of assessing the best procedures to be adopted in the conservation of this important legacy. This study starts with the reproduction of glass recipes existing in the Portuguese arcana, a kind of a secret noteboo...

Epoxy resins are widely used in glass and ceramics conservation. Some studies have been done in order to explore the natural and accelerated ageing of these resins. The most used analytical techniques to characterize the epoxy resins and their ageing have been Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), UV-Vis spectroscopy and tensile strength...

The main purpose of this research is to understand the production of glass in Portugal during the 18th and the 20th centuries with the aim of assessing the best procedures to be adopted in the conservation of this important legacy. This study starts with the reproduction of glass recipes existing in the Portuguese arcana, a kind of a secret noteboo...

This paper presents the study of eighteen samples of colourless glass dated to the Roman period (1st to 3rd centuries C.E.) and that were unearthed in Zadar, Croatia. In this exploratory research, the chemical composition of the glass, which was determined by μ-PIXE, was divided into two main groups based on the alkali and alkali-earth contents: gl...

Among several glass assemblages excavated in the Portuguese territory it is possible to come across a recurrent shape, derived from the traditional dried gourd bottle. This shape was only scarcely identified in other European contexts. For this reason ten gourd shaped bottles were selected from two archaeological assemblages (Santa Clara-a-Velha mo...

This work is part of a PhD project which intends combine the technological study of two glass decorative techniques (pick-up and filigrana) that were very popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, with an analytical approach using a wide range of methodologies across disciplines. It will help to better understand the evolution of these decorative tec...

The archaeometric study of a group of colourless glass fragments recovered from two archaeological excavations performed in Lisbon, Portugal is here reported. The archaeological interventions were performed at Rua do Arsenal (LRA), where the ruins of the Côrte-Real Palace were partially discovered, and at the Roman Theatre Museum (LTR), where the r...

Two sets of wine bottles dated between the end of the 17th and the 19th centuries were characterized by means of μ-PIXE (major and minor elements) and LA–ICP–MS (trace and REE elements). The fragmented wine bottles were recovered from two archaeological contexts in Lisbon and reach a total of 79 fragments. One of the archaeological bottle sets come...

Durante as recentes escavações arqueológicas no local do Museu de Lisboa - Teatro Romano (Portugal), foi descoberto um conjunto de fragmentos de vidro pertencentes a várias tipologias e que foram datados entre os séculos XVII e XVIII. Este conjunto de vidros foi descoberto num contexto habitacional e foi considerado de caráter utilitário. Na sua ma...

More than 40 fragments of colorless glass from heavy baluster stem goblets were found in the archaeological excavation of the Casa dos Bicos in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1981 and 1982. This article focuses on 20 fragments from this collection, dated between the second half of the 1690s and 1755. The study was designed to identify the possible provenance...

The stained‐glass collection from the Pena National Palace (Sintra, Portugal) includes around 130 ‘rural panels’, also known as Fensterbierscheiben , that were produced between the 16th and 19th centuries. The aim of this investigation is to characterise the glass composition of this collection of Fensterbierscheiben and relate it with the iconogra...

Early Modern glass from the Iberian Peninsula has - so far - seldom been investigated. The project, combining chemical analysis with a stylistic approach, and focusing on composition and technology, aims to characterise glass objects circulating in the national territory, in an attempt to identify their origins and to eventually bring to light a Po...

During an archaeological intervention that took place in Beja (southern Portugal), at Avenida Miguel Fernandes, between August 2003 and March 2004, a set of 137 silos was discovered. The excavation yielded an assemblage of glass that can be dated between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries. For this investigation only the fragments from th...

The present contribution addresses the study of more than 150 glass fragments decorated with filigrana technique coming from four archaeological excavations in Portugal: Santa Clara-a-Velha Monastery in Coimbra, Santana Convent and Largo do Chafariz de Dentro in Lisbon, and São João de Tarouca Monastery in Lamego. The fragments show a wide use of d...

A group of late medieval and early modern glass fragments from an archaeological excavation that took place at Avenida Miguel Fernandes in Beja, a town located in the South of Portugal, was chemically characterised by means of PIXE, micro-EDXRF and UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy. PIXE and micro-EDXRF analysis enabled the determination of the chemic...

All the glasses were found to be of soda-­‐lime-­‐silica type. The relatively high amounts of K 2 O, MgO , P 2 O 5 and the presence of chlorine suggest the use of coastal plants as the source of alkali. µ-­‐PIXE analysis also allowed to distinguish three groups regarding the alumina contents where it was possible to identify a group with low alumin...

Organic pollutants such as formic acid , acetic acid and formaldehyde released by some materials (mainly wood) used for storage and display can play an important role on the alteration of the glass structure due to the alkali leaching process. It as been determined that formic acid when present inside storage or display cabinets is the one that aff...

During the recent archaeological excavations in the site of the Museu do Teatro Romano (Roman Theater Museum) in the city of Lisbon (Portugal), several glass fragments of bottles and other typologies were found and dated from 17th to 18th century. This collection is now being studied. The Roman Theater was first discovered in 1798 during the recons...