§ IV. To Make Transparent Colors
XXIII. For the green.
Put in very strong vinegar, verdigrease, rue-juice, and gum
arabic. Set this in the sun for a fortnight, or , if you have no sun, boil
it on the fire. Strain it, bottle and stop it. Shake it well before
using.
XXIV. For the red.
Make a lye with salt of tartar. In it, put to infuse
for one night, some India wood, with a little alum. Boil all, and reduce
to one third. Run it through a linen cloth, and mix some gum-arabic with
it. With more or less alum, you make it of a higher or paler hue.
XXV. For the yellow.
Bruise Avignon seed, called French Berries, and put it
in a lye of salt and tartar to boil on the fire, to the reduction of two thirds.
Run it, and boil it one bubble more. Then bottle and cork it. It
must be shaken before using. A small addition of saffron renders it more
lively.
XXVI. For the blue.
Soak in chamber-lye, one night, a quantity of German Palma
Christi. Take it out and grind it with a little quick lime.-- More or
less quick lime will raise or lower it in hue. And nothing more is
required to dilute it than chamber-lye and gum arabic.
XXVII. Another blue, very like ultramarine.
Grind some indigo on porphyry with turpentine oil. Put
it afterwards in a glazed pipkin, and lute it well. Let it thus lay for
the space of six weeks. The longer you leave it, the more blue it will be.
XXVIII. A pale red to paint on enamel.
1. Take the filings of a piece of good iron. Put
them in a matrass with aquafortis, and set it on a slow fire. Let it boil
gently till the filings are all dissolved.
2. When this is done, pour a little warm water into the
matrass, and let it remain a few hours on the fire, then pour all into another
vessel. When the liquor shall be quite clear, decant it out gently, and
leave the powder, which is at the bottom, to dry.
3. Put this dried powder in a new crucible well covered
and luted, then neal it gently on a very regular fire, and a little while after,
take it out and let it cool.
4. Now one drachm of that powder, and three of yellow
Dutch beads ground with mastich-oil, will give full satisfaction.
XXIX. Process of making purple, for painting an
enamel.
1. Take one drachm of very fine gold, forged weak,
Cut in small bits, and neal it. Put that gold into a matrass, with one
ounce of ammoniac salt, and two of good aquafortis, and set it on a gentle fire
to run all into liquor.
2. Have two ounces of clear water, near boiling, and
throw it in the matrass. This done, pour the whole in a glass phial of
more than a quart size, to which add one ounce and a half of out of tartar drop
by drop. It will occasion an ebullition, which being ceased, you must fill
the bottle with water, and let it rest till the gold falls to the bottom.
3. When the water is quite clear, decant it out gently,
for fear of disturbing the gold and losing it. Then fill the bottle with
new water, repeating this operation till the water is as clear when you decant
it out, as when you put it in, and has no more smell.
4. Take your gold out of the bottle, and put it on a fine
brown paper, folded in four or five doubles, and turned up by the edges, in form
of a little case of mould. There let it dry, and when dry, keep it for
use.
5. Grind, nest, some fine white frost glass; mix it
with water, put it in a bottle, and shake it, then let it settle. When this
powder is fallen to the bottom, decant off the water, and let the powder dry in
the vessel.
6. The proportion to make the purple color. Take
three grains only of your aforesaid gold dust to thirty of the white
frost-glass, this prepared. Mix both in a calcedony mortar with clear
water. After the powder has settled to the bottom of the mortar, decant
out the water, and let the powder dry in the mortar.
7. This done, take the powder out of the mortar, and
putting it on a white bit of paper, dry it by a slow fire, till you see it has
acquired a fine purple hue.
8. Grind, now, this powder with a little oil of spike,
and put it in little cases made with darts, of which the edges are turned up.
When the card has soaked the oil, the whole operation is accomplished.
Preserve it, by putting it in small boxes, in a dry place.
XXX. How to make a fine flesh color.
9. The mere addition of a little black to the above
composition will make the finest color for complexions, or flesh-color, and
may justly be deemed a ninth article in the process which is to be observed in
its fabrication.
XXXI. A good way to make carmine.
Make a little bag, tied very close, of fine Venetian lake.
Put it in a little varnished pipkin, with rain-water and cream of tartar, and
boil it to a syrup. This you will have a fine carmine color.
XXXII. For an amber color.
To much yellow, add equal quantities of each red and white.
XXXIII. The whole process of making ultramarine.
1. Make some of the brownest lapis red hot in a
crucible then throw it into vinegar. Repeat this three times. When
calcined, pound it in a mortar, and sift it. Then grind it on porphyry,
with a mixture of linseed oil and spirit of wine, in equal quantities, and
previously digested together in a matrass, and often shaken to prepare them for
this use. When you shall have subtilized your lapis powder, then
incorporate it with the following cement.
2. Linseed oil, two ounces; Venice turpentine, three;
mastich, half a one; assa faetida, two; black rosin, as much; wax, half an
ounce; yellow rosin, three. Boil all in a glazed pipkin, for a quarter of
an hour; then run it through a cloth into clear water. Take it out of that
water; and, taking of this, and of the grinded lapis, equal quantities,
incorporated them in a glazed pan, and pour some clean warm water over, and let
it rest for a quarter of an hour. Stir this water with a wooden spatula;
and in another quarter of an hour you will see the water all azured.
Decant gently, that water into another glazed pan. Pour new warm water on
the grounds, and proceed as before, continuing to stir and beat it well; then
decant again this new azured water with the former. Repeat doing so, till
the water is no more tainted with any azurine particles. When done, set
your azured waters in evaporation, and there will remain at the bottom a very
fine Azure of Ultramarine, viz. four ounces of it for every one pound of
composition. Of the remainder you make what is called cender blue.
XXXIV. Another very fine ultramarine.
Take the finest lapis lazuli you can find; break it in little
bits, and make it red hot in a crucible, between blasting coals. When red
hot, throw it in white wine vinegar; then dry it and pound it in a marble
mortar with a wooden pestle. Should it not pound easily, calcine it again
as before, and throw it again in vinegar, etc. then try it in the mortar, and if
it do not pound yet, repeat again the same process, till it easily submits to be
pulverized. After it has been put into a fine powder, grind it on a
porphyry stone, with good aquavitae, till it is impalpable. Then gather it
up in little cakes, which set a drying on paper of slates. When dry, if
you pulverize it, you have a fine ultramarine.
XXXV. A secret to compose a fine blue, for washing,
in drawings, instead of ultramarine, which is too dear and too strong to be used
for that purpose.
1. Gather in the summer, a large quantity or blowart,
which grows in the fields among the corn. Pick well their blue leaves off.
Have lukewarm water impregnated with impalpable powder of alum. Put the
picked blue leaves into a marble mortar, with a sufficient quantity of the alum
water, to soak them only. Then, with either a wooden or marble pestle,
pound them, till the whole is so mashed, as to give the juice by expression
through a new cloth. Then strain it over a glass bowl, in which there is
water impregnated with the whitest gum-arabic you can find.
2. Observe that you must not put much alum in the first
water, if you are desirous of preserving the brightness of the color; for by
putting too much of that ingredient, as well as for the water impregnated with
it, you darken the tone of the color.
3. Note. By means of the same process, you
may likewise draw the colors from every flower which has any great eclat.
You must not neglect to pound them with alum water, which prevents the color
from suffering any alteration; as it sometimes happens at the very first bruise.
4. To render these colors portable, set them a-drying
in the shade, in glass vessels, well covered, to fence them against the dust.
XXXVI. The true secrets of making iris-green.
1. Take a large quantity of the flowers of that name in the
spring. Pick them; that is to say, pick out the green and the yellow,
which are at the bottom of the petal of the flower. Next to this, pound
them in a marble mortar, with a little lukewarm water, impregnated with alum.
When pounded, express the juice through a new cloth, over a china bowl.
Then mix some gum-arabic water with it.
2. If you want a tone of color different from the
natural color of the flower, you may change it by only adding, after the
flowers are pounded, a little quicklime dist in the mortar, and give tow or
three strokes of a pestle more to the whole; then strain it.
3. Note. If you should pound these flowers
in a wooden mortar, you must be cautioned at least to take care it should not be
one of walnut tree wood, because it is apt to tarnish he colors and destroy
their brightness, which is one of the chief things always required in colors.
4. In the month of March, you may by means of the same
process, obtain the color from garden, or double violets. But this is
never so fine or so lively.
XXXVII. To make a dark green, for miniature
pictures, washing on paper, an draperies and terraces.
Take, towards the end of autumn, a good quantity of wallwork
stalks, with their fruits on them, and very ripe. Let them rot for five of
six days in the cellar; and when you see the fruits have fomented sufficiently
to give easily their juice by expression, strain it through a new cloth in
alum-water. Divide the whole into several glass tumblers, to dry it more
easily. Set them in the air, but not in the sun; and lay some paper over
them, to prevent any thing from falling into the glasses, but which should not
at the same time stop the exhalation of the liquor, and thereby cause it to
become moldy. By these means, you shall have a color fit for the wash of
a green hue; and dark at the same time.
XXXVIII. To make the Bistre for the wash.
1. Grind on marble, with child's water, some
chimney-soot. Mullar it as fine as possible. When done, put it
in a wide-mouthed bottle, which fill up with clear water; and then, stir and mix
all well with a wooden spatula. Let the coarsest part settle to the bottom
of the vessel. What remains in the bottom is the coarsest bistre.
2. Proceed the same with respect to the second bottle,
and after having left this to settle for three or four days, instead of half an
hour, decant it into a third. This gives you the finest bistre.
3. In the manipulation of all the colors which are
intended to serve in drawing for wash, whenever you will not have them doubtedly
look very bad; for the neatness required in a draught, forbids the use of any
coarse color.
XXXIX. The secret or a fine red for the wash.
1. Make a subtile powder with cochineal. Put it
in a vessel, and pour rose-water over it as will exceed above it by two fingers.
2. Dilute calcined and pulverized alum, while it is
quite warm, into plantain water, and mix some of the liquor in which you have
dissolved the cochineal.
3. This process will give you a very fine red, much
preferable for the wash, to that which is mad with vermillion, because this last
has too much consistence, and besides tarnishes too soon, on account of the
mercury which enters into its composition.
XL. A secret to make carmine at a small expense.
Break and bruise in a bell-metal mortar, half a pound of gold
color Fernamboroug Brasil. Put this to infuse with distilled vinegar, in
a glazed pipkin, in which boil it for the space of a quarter of an hour.
Strain the liquor through a new strong cloth; then set it again on the fire to
boil. When it boils, pour on it white wine vinegar, impregnated with roman
alum.. Stir well with a wooden spatula and the froth that will arise is the
carmine. Skim it carefully in a glass vessel, and set it to dry.
