Ming Dynasty: I am truly not the Emperor of Longevity

Do you know where there are workshops that can make glass?

After playing with it for a moment, Lu Chen handed the Venetian glass to Gao Ruopu.

"My lord, of course we have a glass workshop."

Gao Ruopu took the glass.

"Ordinary glass workshops exist in Linqing Prefecture, mainly for firing glazed tiles."

If you want to make exquisite Western-style glass cups, the local glass workshops probably don't have the capability.

However, the most famous glass-producing area in the world, Yanshen Town, is located in Yidu County, Qingzhou Prefecture, which is only about 300 li away from our Linqing Prefecture.

My family also has several exquisite glass ornaments made by skilled craftsmen from Yanshen Town. They are so beautiful that they are no less exquisite than jade or fine porcelain from the Jingdezhen imperial kilns.

Unfortunately, the quality of the glass from Yanshen Town is far inferior to the crystal clarity of the Western-style glass cup that you possess.

The glass artisans in Yanshen Town are highly skilled, so it shouldn't be difficult for them to replicate this Western glass cup.

However, counterfeits are likely only superficially similar, lacking the most valuable and essential elements.

Had the glassmaking technology of the Ming Dynasty really developed to this level?

Lu Chen was also somewhat surprised to hear Gao Ruopu's words.

This means that if you want to make a replica of a glass from Murano Island in Venice, or other glass crafts, you only need to solve one thing!

That is to turn opaque or semi-transparent domestic glass into transparent and crystal clear glass!

For someone like me, a transmigrator with only a little theoretical knowledge and no practical experience, this is a huge boon!

In another dimension, ancient China actually had glass products as early as the Western Zhou Dynasty, but from the very beginning, it took a completely different technological route from the West.

The primary purpose of glassmaking in ancient China was to create imitations of jade.

In the Chinese cultural sphere, jade culture is deeply rooted, and glass has long been regarded as "imitation jade" or "medicinal jade".

What artisans throughout history have pursued is not colorless and transparent, but rather to be as close as possible to the texture of jade.

It wasn't until the 35th year of the Kangxi Emperor's reign in the Qing Dynasty that the Imperial Household Department, under the technical guidance of the German missionary Gustav G. Lien, established the first palace glass factory to produce transparent glass products.

The transparent glass products produced by this imperial glass factory were only made for the royal family. They did not become truly popular among the common people until the late Qing Dynasty.

The base color of glass lies in its sand!

The culprit behind opaque or semi-transparent glass is actually impurities, especially iron.

The glass artisans of the Ming Dynasty may have known that to make glass products whiter and more transparent, they needed to use "white sand," but most of them did not know why they needed to use it or how to make it whiter.

The solution is simple: abandon ordinary river sand and use quartz sand instead, which is the "white sand" that looks crystal clear and has uniform particles.

However, this is too labor-intensive; it would be better to simply crush and grind the quartzite into fine particles.

Removing iron-containing impurities from these particles is so simple it's just a matter of a few drops.

Quartz sand particles must be washed several times before being fed into the kiln to remove visible impurities.

During the washing process, simply placing a few magnets in the mixture will remove iron-containing particles.

Thus, the basic conditions for firing colorless and transparent glass have been met.

As for glass with various colors, you only need to add different metals during the melting process. For example, adding iron will make it green, and adding copper will make it golden red.

Adding "Sumali Blue," a high-quality pigment used in firing blue and white porcelain, also known as cobalt, can give glass a vibrant blue color.

The specific type of metal to add, the amount to add, and the resulting color of the glass can all be determined through experimentation by the craftsmen.

Having achieved this level of quality, the raw materials alone are comparable to those from Venice.

Moreover, Lu Chen also knew about another trump card from the previous world.

That is to add lead oxide into transparent glass, which is the "lead cinnabar" used by Taoist alchemists!

In this way, the renowned Swarovski crystal from another dimension could have been introduced ahead of schedule during the Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty.

This gem-quality crystal glass would absolutely outshine European glass of this era.

All the raw materials could be purchased in the Ming Dynasty, and the production technology in Yanshen Town was fully capable of meeting the requirements.

There are no obstacles to producing glass crafts of the same quality as those Lu Chen saw in boutiques before his transmigration.

It simply takes some time for the craftsmen to experiment and make mistakes.

Lu Chen estimates that it will only take a few months at most to produce the first batch of crystal glass handicrafts.

Moreover, the cost is not very high.

It shouldn't be difficult to reduce the cost price of a glass of comparable quality to the one I bought from Murano Island in Venice for 150 taels of silver to below 5 taels of silver.

This was due to the immature production process and low yield rate in the early stages.

Once the process stabilizes and mass production begins, it's a certainty that the cost will drop to less than one or two taels of silver!

As long as the technology can be kept secret and production can be exclusive, this is a business that is even more profitable than selling enhancers in later generations!

It's decided: we'll open a secret workshop in Linqing to produce crystal glass handicrafts.

If I were just an ordinary time traveler, and I were to open such a workshop in ancient society, the most important thing would not be production or sales.

Instead, they must find a protective umbrella for themselves in the local area through various means.

In the Ming Dynasty, those who ran profitable businesses without a strong background were seen as easy targets by various factions.

Moreover, due to the lack of constraints on craftsmen and insufficient security capabilities, the possibility of technology leaks is also very high.

However, for an ordinary person to seek protection from a local powerful figure is essentially asking a tiger for its skin.

The protector he found might be able to keep out outsiders who coveted the workshop, but this protector also saw the workshop as a fat sheep.

In the short term, they may be content with the shares or dividends given by the transmigrators, but as time goes by, the workshop's profits will increase.

This protector could turn on you at any moment and swallow this goose that lays golden eggs whole.

If something like that were to happen, let alone the industry, it would be hard to say whether the time travelers could even save their lives.

But these problems are not problems for me now!

Lu Chen himself was a seventh-rank Jinyiwei captain, which was enough to deter most of those who coveted him.

Moreover, everyone in the Linqing Thousand-Household Garrison of the Embroidered Uniform Guard was trying to curry favor with him, and the entire garrison was willing to protect him.

With my crystal glass workshop, no one in Linqing would dare to mess with me; the safety factor is off the charts.

Moreover, he couldn't possibly keep all the profits to himself; Lu Chen understood the principle of sharing profits in business.

Rather than opening this workshop in his own name, he might as well turn it into a treasury for the Linqing Imperial Guard Thousand Household Office.

They bound all of the more than one thousand Jinyiwei (Imperial Guards) in Linqing to their own pirate ship!