CXXIX. An azure as fine as, and which looks similar to, ultramarine.CXXX. The same another way, as practised in Germany.CXXXI. Another very fine azure.CXXXII. Another.

Valuable Secrets concerning Arts and Trades:
or Approved Directions, from the best Artists, for the Various Methods...
Printed by Thomas Hubbard,
Norwich, 1795Chap. V. Secrets concerning colours & painting.

§ VIII. Preparations of colours of all sorts for oil, water, and crayons.


CXXIX. An azure as fine as, and which looks similar to, ultramarine.

Grind well together into powder three ounces of ammoniac salt, and six of verdigrise. Then wet it, in continuing to grind it with oil of tartar, till you have made it pretty fluid. Put this into a glass matrass, and bury it for five days in hot dung. At the end of that term you will find your composition turned into a fine azure.


CXXX. The same another way, as practised in Germany.

Here is another method of proceeding, to make azure, as they practise it in Germany, and which is very fine and good.

1. Distil, in an alembic, one pound of vitriol, half a pound of nitre, and three ounces of cinnabar. In this water put tinsel or copper; they will dissolve. When the dissolution shall be perfected, add a sufficient quantity of calcined pewter to render your liquor quite milk-white. Let the whole rest for three days, and then you will have a middling azure.

2. A very good observation. The liquor which stlls from the vitriol, cinnabar, and nitre, has the power to dissolve any sort of metal whatever. - It has again this additional virtue, that if you rub the forehead of a horse with it, the hair will instantly turn, and remain, white at that place.


CXXXI. Another very fine azure.

Dissolve, in one pound of the strongest double distilled wine vinegar, two ounces of ammoniac salt in powder, one of copper filings, and one pound of the whitest eggs shells calx. Put this composition into a copper vessel, which you must stop and lute so well, with its copper lid, that nothing can possibly exhale from it. Place this for one month in hot horse dung, and at the end of that term you will find a very fine azure.


CXXXII. Another.

Take vitriol calcined to redness, one part: sulphur vivum, two; and quick silver, three. Mix well all into one powder, which you must put into a glass retort, and bury it over in hot horse dung for forty days; after which term the composition will be turned into a very fine azure.