An Industry Which Dates Back To Roman Times

Taranaki Daily News, 8 September 1934, Page 15 (Supplement)

An Industry Which Dates Back To Roman Times

SIXTEEN or more centuries ago the ° Romans, on one of their excursions through the valley oftheNahe, discovered large deposits of agate where Idar-Oberstein, the twin city near the noted saline spa Kreuznach, now stands. To-day the agate polishers still lean on their benches and polish and cut this veined chalcedony into various forms and ornaments, or, after treating the freshly-cut stone with honey, water, heat, oil and sulphric acid, convert it into the onyx of commerce.

In earlier days the traders who bought the produce from the polishers sold it in all parts of Europe, and the trade later reached other continents, including even Asia and Africa. About the middle of the last century the deposits of the mineral in the Idar-Oberstein fields were exhausted, and the whole polishing and cutting industry was threatened with extinction. But great deposits of agate were discovered in Brazil just in time to save the industry, and the imports from that country are still being worked up here. The Brazilian agate can generally be won without difficulty, since it either lies exposed, on mountain slopes or is found in the beds of streams. Single pieces weighing several cwt are often discovered. Unfortunately this agate lacks the brilliant colours of the agate of the Nahe valley, but it can be coloured chemically. ,

With the discovery of the agate fields in Brazil, the German industry took on new life. The polished and cut stones go to all parts of the world in the form of thimbles, seals, letter-openers, ashtrays, sword hilts, handles for knives and forks, and hundreds of other articles, including ornaments made from the finest stones. Russia formerly took great quantities of agate eggs for use at Eastertide.

Gradually other materials also began to be polished and cut in IdarOberstein. Here one finds a crucifixion group cut out of mountain crystal. There are but three such groups in the world. The others are in St. Peter’s in Rome and in Westminster Abbey in London. Old traditions are preserved, and the art of polishing and cutting stones is

handed down from generation to generation. r In the place of the old huts, 'in which the waters of the small river drove the wheels that turned the grindstones, one finds today in the main modernly-equipped factories, but a few of the old huts still stand. They are of wood, roofed with blue slate, and with wide windows to light the polisher’s bench. Outside the wall on one side is the waterwheel, and inside the grindstone. In front of it the polishers lean on their benches, their faces close to the grindstone. It is hard work, work which fills the lungs with dust and eventuates in the “polishers’ disease” which later generations came to know as tuberculosis. Most of the factories are now motorised, and the polishers have been induced—but often only with difficulty—to sit down at their work. But some of the primitive huts with their equally primitive waterwheels are still in operation, and here the visitor can see men working as their forefathers worked long ago.