A very dear friend of mine gave me a Waterford crystal Apple early in our friendship. Whether rock crystal or lead crystal, the prismatic properties made from these substances always delight and dazzle.
I have a Waterford votive holder with a heart motif. I lit it today in honour of St. Valentine's Day and then thought about the use of lead, a very poisonous substance, in art.
Ancient Romans died by the thousands, thinking that they had been poisoned by their enemies when in fact it was the lead in their pipes and serving dishes that caused their deaths. The poisonous substance makes glass far more dazzling than it otherwise would be. Lead paint has many virtues that its less poisonous cousins lack.
One of my favourite short stories as a child was entitled Rappaccini's Daughter. It was about a beautiful girl who had been raised in a garden of poisonous plants. So imbued by the poisons was she that a single kiss would kill any suitor. I am not certain why that tale appealed to me so strongly. I certainly was fascinated with poison as a child. I begged for a Renaissance-styled 'Poison Ring' from the local Shakespeare festival and filled it with mistletoe berries. I wanted to have a poison garden like the one in Hawthorne's tale.
When I moved to Pennsylvania, I did have a poison garden with every poisonous plant and flower I could obtain. Many of the most beautiful flowers and most interesting plants are poisonous actually. Aconite and Hellebore both are gorgeous. It is difficult sometimes to find the poisonous plants as many florists refuse to deal in them. Poison and hallucinogenic often go hand in hand. Lobelia and Angel's Trumpet are beautiful flowers and both cause hallucinations.
In any event, both lead crystal and poisonous flowers lead one to muse upon the correlation between beauty and danger or fatal power. What price beauty and art? Obviously, through the ages, mankind has been willing to risk health for the sake of art and beauty.
I personally believe that we have the right to surround ourselves with toxins if we so choose as long as they do not affect other people. I dislike the tendency of people and governments to interfere in freedom, to make laws prohibiting certain plants or paints or crystal made with high concentrations of lead, especially in this day and age when almost EVERY ONE has access to the 'information highway'. It is not like Ancient Rome, where the majority of the population was being poisoned without their knowledge. If we wish to drink from leaded crystal in order to savour the beauty of the relfection of light and colour upon the faceted glass, why should we not be able to do so freely? In any event, the concentrations of lead allowed in our own era probably are quite safe. Knowing this, who on earth would not choose a Waterford goblet over plain glass?
