Dictionarium polygraphicum. Of preparing colours. Of mixt and compound colours.

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
An ash colour or gray is made by mixing white and lamp black, or white with sinaper; indigo and black make an ash colour.

To make an azure or blue.
Mix the azure with glue water, and not with gum water.

A bay colour.
Mingle vermilion with a little Spanish brown and black.

A bright crimson.
Mix tincture of brazile with a little ceruss ground with fair water.

To make a crimson lake.
It is usually made of the shorn off from crimson cloth, by a lye made of salt-petre, which extracts the colour; which precipitate, edulcorate, and dry in the sun, or in a stove.

To make a sad crimson.
Mix the aforesaid light crimson with a little indigo, ground with fair water.

To make a flame colour.
It is made of vermilion and orpiment, mixed deep or light at pleasure: or thus; take red lead, and mix it with masticote, which heighten with white.

To make a glass grey.
Mingle ceruss, with a little azure.

To make excellent good greens.
The liver of a lamprey makes an excellent green; and yellow lay’d upon blue will change into green; so likewise the juice of a blue flower de luce, mix’d with gum water, will be a perfect and durable green or blue, according as it is us’d.

To make a light green.
It is made of pink or smalt with white, to make it whiter, if need require.

To make a lead colour.
It is made of white, mix’d with indigo.

To make a flesh colour.
Mix a little lake and red lead with white, a very small quantity of each; you may make it as light or as red as you please, by putting more or less white in it. If you would have a swarthy complexion to distinguish a man's flesh from a woman's, put a little yellow oker among your flesh colour; and for your shadow, put a little more lake, and a small quantity of burnt umber.

To make a murrey which is compos'd of purple and white; it is made thus, take cinnabar lake two ounces, white lead one ounce, and grind them together.

To make a good murrey.
Temper roset with a little rose water, in which a little gum hath been dissolv’d, and it will be good, but not better than the first.

To make a pure lake.
Take urine ten pounds; boil it in a kettle, and skim it with an iron skimmer, till it comes to eight pounds; to which add gum lake half a pound, allum two ounces and a half; boil all till it is well coloured, which you may try by dipping a piece of linen cloth in it; then add sweet alum in powder a sufficient quantity; strain it, and let it stand; strain it again through a dry cloth, till the liquor be clear; that which remains in the cloth or bag is the pure lake.

To make a deep purple.
This is made of indigo, Spanish brown, and white.

Another purple.
Boil log-wood in vinegar and beer in a glaz'd earthen vessel, adding thereto a little alum, till you taste it to be strong on your tongue; when it is sufficiently boil'd, strain out the liquor through a cloth, and keep it in a glass close stopt for use.

To make a yellow green or purple.
Buck-thorn berries gathered green, and steep'd in alum water, yield a good yellow; but being thorough ripe and black, they yield a good green; and lastly, being gathered when they are ready to drop off, which is about the middle or end of November, their juice mixt with alum water, yields a good purple colour.

To make a pear green.
Take white tartar and verdegrease; temper them with strong white wine vinegar, in which a little gum arabick has been dissolved.

Another purple Colour.
Mix blue bice and lake together, or if you want bice, take blue verditer (but that is not altogether so good) mix them well together, and it is done. If you want lake, you may instead thereof use thick red ink, which will do as well as lake in washing.

To make cloud Colours.
You may sometimes take blue verditer, sometimes light masticote shadowed with blue verditer, or lake and white, or red ink and white shadowed with blue verditer.

To make a Red Colour.
Take the roots of the lesser bugloss, viz. alkanet, and beat them, and strain out the juice, and mix it with alum water.

To make a scarlet Colour.
It is made of red-lead, lake and vermilion, yet vermilion in this case is not very useful.

To make a pure Purple Colour.
Take fine brimstone an ounce and a half, quicksilver, sal armoniac, jupiter, of each one ounce, pulverize the salt and brimstone, and make an amalgama with the quicksilver and tin; mix all together, which put into a great glass gourd; make under it an ordinary fire, and keep it in a constant heat for the space of fix hours.

A saffron Colour, is made of saffron alone by infusion.

To make Vermilion.
Take brimstone in powder four ounces, mix it with quicksilver a pound, put it into a crucible well luted, and upon a charcoal fire heat it till it is red hot, then take it off and let it cool.

To make a Violet Colour. Take a little indigo and tincture of brasile, grind them with a little ceruss.

To make a Yellow.
Take the yellow chives in white lilies, fleep them in gum water and they will make a perfect yellow; the same from saffron and tartar tempered with gum water.