Dictionarium polygraphicum. Carmine.

Dictionarium Polygraphicum:
Or, The Whole Body of Arts Regularly Digested.
Vol I.
London: Printed for C. Hitch and C. Davis in Pater-noster Row, and S. Austen in St. Paul's Church Yard. MDCCXXXV.
1735
CARMINE, a red colour, very vivid, bordering somewhat on the purple, us’d by painters in miniature; and sometimes painters in oil, tho' rarely, by reason of its great price.

Carmine is the most valuable product of the cochineal mestique; which is a secula or sediment, residing at the bottom of the water, wherein cochineal, conan, and antour has been steep'd: some add rocou, but this gives carmine too much of the oval cast.

That which is good is almost in an impalpable powder.

Some make Carmine with brazile wood, fernambouc, and leaf gold beat in a mortar, and steep'd in white wine vinegar; the scum arising from this mixture, upon boiling, when dryed, makes Carmine; but this kind is vastly inferior to the former.

Another Carmine.
Steep a pound of brazile wood, of fernambouc of the colour of gold, for three or four days in an earthen vessel or pot of white wine vinegar; after having broken it well in a mortar, boil it half an hour.
Then pass or strain it through a very course linen cloth, and set it again upon the fire.
Take another little pot of white wine vinegar, and in it fleep or temper eight ounces of alum. Put this alum so tempered in the other liquor, and stir it about well with a spatula.
The scum or froth which arises is the Carmine; take it off as it rises, and let it dry. The same may be done with cochineal instead of brazile.

Another Carmine.
Take three pints of spring water, which has not passed through leaden pipes; put it into a glaz'd earthen pot, and set it on the fire.
When it is ready to boil, put in half or a quarter of an ounce of the grain of cohan or dyer's red, which the feather dyers use, reduc’d to a fine powder.
Then boil it for about three quarters of an hour, or till the fourth part of the water be consum’d. Let the fire be a coal fire.
Then strain this water through a linen cloth into another well glaz'd vessel, and set it on the fire till it begins to boil; then put in an ounce of cochineal, and a quarter of an ounce of arnotto, both reduc’d to powder apart; and let this liquor boil away to one half, or rather till it raises a black scum, and is very red; for it takes a colour by being boil’d.
Then take it off the fire, and strew into it half an ounce or three pinches of roch alum, or Roman alum, pulveriz'd, which last is reddish and better; and about half a quarter of an hour after, strain it through a linen cloth into a vessel well glaz'd, or you may divide it in several small Dutch glaz'd porringers, in which let it stand to settle for twelve or fifteen days, and there will appear on the surface a mouldy skin, which you are to take off with a spunge, and expose the matter underneath to the air.
When the watry part on the top is evaporated, dry the matter which remains at the bottom, and grind it upon a very hard and smooth marble stone or porphyry, and then sist it through a very fine sieve.
The quantities of these ingredients are not so fixt to the proportion before directed, but that you may put in either more or less of them at discretion, according to the depth or degree of colour you desire.
If you would have the Carmine redder, you may put in more arnotto, if more of a crimson, more cochineal; but all of them must be reduc’d to powder separately, and the grain of cohan or dyers weed must first be boil'd alone, and the other altogether as before directed.