Alchemy vs. Chemistry

The alchemical process never achieved the desired goal, and during the 18th-century, alchemy was progressively declined. His work methodology, "The Dark by the Darkest," did not match the mentality of the Enlightenment and even less with the scientific character of chemistry, which was perfected towards the end of the century. The decline of alchemy meant the dissolution of the close relationship between theory and operation. 

The hermetic vessel (Vas Hermetis), is the main symbol of alchemy, since it was the vessel where the "Opus magnum" was produced. This vessel has reached our days as the Florentine flask, a glass instrument very present in modern chemistry laboratories. As a personal tribute to alchemy as a discipline and what it symbolizes (union between theory and practice), I have extracted the mold of one of these laboratory pieces to reproduce its shape in ceramic containers. I also developed the mold of the Erlenmeyer flask to perform the contemporary homonym to the emblem of alchemy in antiquity. In this case, the Erlenmeyer flask was designed by the German chemist Emil Erlenmeyer in 1861, which has become the central symbol of modern chemistry. 
  
In the eighteenth century, after the decline of alchemy, chemistry became the science of nature, while hermeticism (philosophy) lost its practice in the practical field and was lost in allegories and speculations. 

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Submitted by Emma Llorente Palacio.
Photography by Victor Gomez.