There was an intriguing article recently on the BBC News (online)) about scientific discoveries presented to the Royal Society, London: Four incredible objects that made science history.
The article refers to some 250,000 documents that can now be viewed online, and that include letters sent by the public to the Society in the 17th, 18th and 19th century about scientific observations and other matters of interest to the Society.
One letter from 1779 was sent by someone called Jean Antoine André, a cloth-maker, from Offenbach am Main, Hesse, Germany. Included was an introductory letter and a piece of silk that Mr André said demonstrated he had discovered how to make the "pinkest ever pink dye".
Following our initial question whether there was someone who knew about the cloth maker and which dye was being referred to, we received a reply from Monika Preuss in Germany:
The family André were French Huguenots who emigrated to German lands in 1699. Marc André (1705-1751) married Marie Juliane Pfaltz, daughter of a cloth-maker from Mannheim, and started his business of silk weaving in Offenbach. His eldest son Johann André (1741-1799) established a shop dealing with music (Musikalienhandlung André in Offenbach, still existing today). Johann or another son continued the silk factory or the eldest was engaged in both. For more information about the family, click the Wikipedia entry.
26 April 2023
