Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker…the Glazier

Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker was born in 1619 or 20, married in 1651, and buried Dec 5 1682.

Assumed to be the translator of Spinoza’s works into Dutch, on the strength of the evidence from Duijkerius’ Philopater novel, Glazemaker is seen to be a thorough participant in the Van den Enden and Jan Rieuwertsz circle of Cartesian-Collegiant politicists. Nadler counts him, taking him as part of the Mennonite Amsterdam community, a likely friend of Jelles from youth. It should be noted as a very shallow but perhaps significant resource that, as per his adopted name, he worked as a glazier before becoming a professional translator. As a glazier, and part of a glazier family (after his step father Wijbrandt Reijndersz), he was familiar with techniques of glass making (if peripherally), sources for very good glass, and possibly spectacle makers.

(There is a history that connects the glass used for lens-grinding to the glass used for windows and mirrors. Rolf Willach in his “Development of Lens Grinding and Polishing…” reports that at least in the early part of the century, the glass used was window glass cut into circles, and deduces that three telescopes from the first decades of the 1600s used Venetian mirrors to grind into their plano-convex shape.)

Though a negligable lead in the quest for Spinoza’s early lens-grinding knowledge, because Hudde’s technique of microscope lenses was a glass-beading technique, and by one report Van Leeuwenhoek was inspired to learn lens-crafting from watching a fair glass-blower, it is something to mark.

 

A list of some of Glazemaker’s translations and their dates [Spinoza leaves Amsterdam mid 1661]

De deugdelijke vrou (1643)
Joh. Barclai, D’Argenis (1643)
Toonneel der werreltsche veranderingen (1645)
Romainsche Historien van Titus Luvius, sedert de bouwing van Romen tot aan d’ondergang van ‘t Macadonische Rijk. (1646)
Nikolous Coeffeteau, Romanische historien (1649)
D. Erasmus, Onderwijs tot de ware godgeleertheit (1651)
Homerus, De Iliaden (1654)
Descartes, Redenering om ‘t beleed, om zijn reden wel te beleiden ende waarheit in de wetenschappen te zoeken (1656)
Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia: of bedenkingen van d’eerste wijsbegeerte (1656-1657)
Descartes, Principia philosophiae: of beginselen der wijsbegeerte (1657)
Descartes, Proeven der wijsbegeerte (1659)
J. Lily, De vermaakelijke Historie, Zee- en Land-Reyze van Euphues (1668 )