I can't remember

Very handy for me when I read the book after her! ;)

i heard a really great story once & i can't remember where. i want to read about it again, & maybe write about it in school, but i can't find it to use for research. i thought i could paraphrase it here & if anyone had heard it they could tell me where they heard it. i thought it was something in maggie nelson's book bluets, but the google-books-searching i've done ont it haven't turned up any specifics:

so there was a guy, a few centuries back, who had a reputation as a stained glass artist; he was one of the best, & was in demand, most particularly for his new & distinctive blue glass. the guy worked & submitted invoices to the churches he was decorating, inventorying things like the import of crushed sapphire from which he had created his art. sometime more recently, some scientists were studying the glass, & analysing his work. they found out that none of the blue glass he used actually featured any sapphire. the guy had his method, he really was producing some nice blue glass, but at the same time he was fraudulently billing exotic & expensive materials to his patrons. he was a charlatan.

i love thinking about this guy's racket & would love to look for more details about it; it's just a hard thing to keyword search for, & i can't remember where it came to me from.

I can't assist, but to update my predicament from the first post, I'm really no better at it. Kindle books have helped though, easily searchable. Also wikis with character bios.