§ IV. To make transparent colours.

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

§ IV. To make transparent colours.


XXIII. For the green.

Put in very strong vinegar, verdigrise, 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, which we, in this country, call French Berries, and put it in a lye of salt of 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 stroken before using. - A small addition of saffron renders it more lively.


XXVI. For the blue.

Soak in chamber-lye, for one night, a certain quantity of German Palma christi. Take it out and grind is 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. Rut 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 there, 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 shail 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, and 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 well grinded with mastich-oil, will give full satisfaction. This is far from being a contemptible secret.


XXIX. Process of making the purple, for painting on enamel; a most admirable secret.

1. Take one drachm of very fine old, forged weak. Gut it 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, nearly boiling, and throw it in the matrass. This done, pour the whole in a glass phial of more than a quart size, to which you will add one ounce and a half of oil 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, and do the same, 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 or mould. There let it dry; and, when dry, keep it for use.

5. Grind, next, some fine white frost-glass; mix it with water, put it in a bottle, and shake it, then let it settle. When this powder has fallen to the bottom, decant off the water, and let the powder dry in the same vessel in which it is.

6. Now the proportion to make the purple colour: Take three grains only of your aforesaid gold dust to thirty of the white frost-glass, thus prepared. Mix both these powders in a calcedony -mortar with a good deal of clear water. After the powder has settled to the bottom of the mortar, decant out die water, and let the powder dry in the mortar itself.

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 ir, little cases made with cards, of which the edges, are turned up. When the card has soaked the oil, the whole operation is accomplished. It is to bs preferred by putting it in small boxes, and put them in a dry place.


XXX. How to make a fine flesh colour.

9. The mere addition of a little black to the above composition will make the finest colour for complexions, or flesh, colour, 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 tarter, and boil it to asyrup. Thus you will have a fine, carmine colour.


XXXII. Another way.

Grind dry, on porphyry, same of coccinella ursuta sugarcandy, roch-alum, and gum-arabic, all nearly in equal quantities, except the gum, of which you put a little less. Put these powders into a glass phial, and pour over a sufficient quantity of brandy to cover them, and squeeze over the juice of a lemon. Stop well the bottle, and set it in the sun for six weeks. Run the colour into shells, taking care that none of the ground should run out with it.


XXXIII. The whole process of making ultramarine, three times experienced by the author.

1. Make some of the browned lapis red-hot in a crucible, then throw it into vinegar. Repeat this three times. When calcined, pound it in a mortar, and fire it. Then grind it on porphyry, with a mixture of lintseed oil and spirit of wine, in equal quantities, and previously digested together in amatrass, and often shaken to prepare them for this use. When you shall have subtilised your lapis powder, then incorporate it with the following cement.

2. Lintseed oil, two ounces; Venice turpentine, three; mastich, half a one; assa foetida, two; black rosin, as much; wax, half an ounce; yellow rosin, three. Boil all in a glased 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, incorporate them in a glazed pan, and pour some clean and clear warm water over, and let it rest for a quarter of an hour. Stir this water with a wooden spatula; and, in less than an other 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 may make what is called cender-blue.


XXXIV. Another very fine and well-experienced 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, &c. then try it again in the mortar, and if it do not pound yet, repeat again the same process, till it does at last easily submit to be pulverised. After it has been put into a fine powder, grind it on a porphyry stone, with good aquavitæ, till it is impalpable. Then gather it up in little cakes, which you set a-drying on paper or flates. When dry, if you pulverise it, you have a fine ultramarine of it.


XXXV. A very good and experienced pastil to make ultramarine of. - The doses as for one pound.

Take nut or lintseed oil, three ounces; new wax, and fine rosin, three ounces of each; rosin, one; Burgundy pitch, four; oliban, otherwise male frankincense, two drachms; dragon's blood, one. Melt all these ingredients, one after another, in the same order as they are here prescribed. That is to say, put in a varnished pipkin, the oil first; and, when a little warm, put in the rosin by little bits. This being dissolved, put in the chalk pulverised, pouring it gently, and by little at a time, left it mould blaze. As soon as the rosin is melted, pour the rosin in powder, and by degrees likewise. Next add the Burgundy pitch, broken in small bits, for it does not admit of pulverisation; you must, notwithstanding, put it in but by little at a time; and, When all are introduced and well dissolved, you add gradually the dose of dragon's blood powder, and let it dissolve like the other drugs. Stir this composition with a stick, by means of which you are to judge whether or not your pastil is done. To know it, let a drop fall from the stick into a pan or water; then, working it between your fingers, you see whether or not it stick to them. If it stick, the pastil is not done, and you must let it remain longer on the fire; then repeat the trial again, till it does not stick to your fingers, as a proof of its being arrived at its degree of perfection. Throw it in a glazed pipkin filled with cold water; and when it becomes a little cold, make it into a ball with your hands, which you shall have previously greased with lintseed oil. Then you may keep it as long as you please for use. Stay, however, three or four days before using it the first time.


XXXVI. The way of mixing the lapis with the pastil, to make ultramarine.

1. Dilute, as thick as you can, a quantity of the before-mentioned impalpable powder of lapis lazuli, with a liquor made of two parts of aquavitæ, and one of lintseed oil.

2. Melt in another glazed pan, without the assistance of water, and over a gentle fire, the pastil described in the preceding receipt. - Observe that your pastil be perfectly purified from any particles of water it might have carried away with it, when you threw it in water in order to form it into a ball.

3. When the pastil is melted, throw into it the thick paste you had previously made of lapis lazuli with brandy and lintseed-oil. Stir and mix this so well, that the whole be most perfectly united and incorporated. Then let it remain twenty-four hours, and cover it well for fear of any dust getting at it.

4. After the said twenty-four hours are elapsed, put in this pan a quantity of lukewarm water, proportionable to that of the matter, and work well the whole together with two wooden pestles, till the water becomes quite blue, which you will immediately decant off into a china bason, and cover carefully for fear of dust.

5. Put new lukewarm water again on the same pastil. Work it a-new as before, and proceed the same as for the first time. Repeat this operation as many times as you find the water coming blue, and till you perceive it begins to turn gray or white, which is a convincing proof ihat there is no more any thing good in the pastil. - Be careful to range in order the different bowls in which you have decanted your tinged waters; and, to avoid mistakes, number them by first, second, third, &c.

6. Let these waters settle, and when quite clear as when you put them in, decant them again with all the gentleness possible, each into another similar vessel, for fear of loosing any of the ultramarine which lies fixed all round the sides and bottom of the bowls, and might be, though never so little, carried off with the decanted waters. When these waters are duly decanted off, cover again, carefully, the bowls, for fear of the dull, and let the ultramarine, which lies round them, dry perfectly! When dry, brush it down gently to the bottom, with a new and soft hair brush, and gather your powders separately with the same numbers on each parcel, agreeable to that of the bowls whence they come.

7. The first ultramarine is the finest; the second is not so much soa s the first; neither is the third so fine as the second. And it goes thus, decreasing in beauty, merit, and value.


Observations on the above process.

1. Ultramarine might be drawn from the pastil, by working it with the hands instead of pestles. But, as it fatigues a great deal more the articulations by that sort of working, than by the other, there is room to think, that by this mode of proceeding, each single operation might be attended with some imperfection; which is the region why the pestles are preferable.

2. Some people make their lapis red hot on the bare coais, then steep in distilled vinegar, repeating this several times till it becomes fryable.

3. But it is much preferable to make it red hot in a crucible; because, should the fire make it split, the bits will remain in the crucible. Now it need not be wondered at if it does, particularly when calcinations are often repeated.

4. The lapis, which is of a fine blue, and striped with gold or silver, is the best to make ultramarine of.

5. The lapis is also reckoned to be of a good quality, when it preserves its fine colour, even after it has been made red hot in blasting charcoals.


XXXVII. Another secret to compose a fine blue; fit for washing, in drawings, instead of ultramarine, which is both too dear, and too strong, to be used for that purpose.

Gather in the summer, a large quantity of blowart which grows in the fields among the corn. Pick well their blue leaves off, and throw the remainder away. Have lukewarm water impregnated with impalpable powder of alum. Put the above picked blue leaves in to a marble mortar with a sufficient quantity of that 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 easily all the juice by expression through a new cloth. When you strain it, you must do it over a china or 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 colour: for, by putting too much of that ingredient, as well as of the water impregnated with it, you darken the tone of the colour.

3. Note. By means of the same process, you may likewise draw the colours from every flower which has any great eclat. You must not neglect to pound them with alum water, which prevents the colour from suffering any alteration; as it sometimes happens at the very first bruise.

4. To render these colours portable, you set them a-drying in the shade, in china or glass vessels, well covered to fence them against the dust.



XXXVIII. The true secret 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 colour different from the natural colour of the flower, you may change it by only adding, after the flowers are pounded, a little quick lime dud in the mortar, and give two or three strokes of a pestle more to the whole; then drain it.

3. Note. If you mould 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 the colours, and destroy their brightness, which is one of the chief things always required in colours.

4. In the month of March, you may, by means of the same process, obtain the colour from garden, or double violets. But this is never so fine nor so lively.


XXXIX. To make a dark green, whether for the ground, of miniature pictures, or for washing on paper, or, in short, for draperies and terraces.

Take, towards the end of autumn, a good quantity of wallwort's stalks, with their fruits on them, and very ripe. Let them not for five or six days, in the cellar; and, when you see the fruits have somented sufficiently to give easily their juice by expression, drain 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 mould not at the same time stop the exhalation of the liquor, and thereby cause it to become mouldy. By these means, you shall have a colour fit for the warn of a green hue, and dark at the same time.


XL. To make the Bistre, for the wash.

1. Grind, on marble, with child's water, some chimney-soot. Mullar it thus so long as to bring it to be 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 coariest parts settle for about half an hour's time, and fall to the bottom of the vessel. Decant out now the liquor gently into another vessel. What remains in the bottom of the first bottle, 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. It is thus you 3 fire to proceed in the manipulation of all the colours which are intended to serve in drawing for wash whenever you will not have them rise thick above the surface of the paper, which would undoubtedly look very bad; for, the neatness required in a draught, forbids the use of any coarse colour.


XLI. The secret for a fine Red for the wash.

1. Make a subtile powder with any quantity of cochineal. Put it in a vessel, and pour so much rose-water over it as will exceed above it by two fingers.

2. Dilute calcined and pulverised alum, while it is yet 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 made with vermilion, because this last has too much considence, and, besides tarnishes too soon, on account of the mercury which enters into its composition.


XLII. A secret to make Carmine, at a small expence.

Break and bruise, in a bell-metal mortar, half-a-pound of gold colour Fernambourg - Brasil. Put this to infuse with distilled vinegar in a glazed pipkin, in which you boil it for the space of a quarter of an hour. Strain the liquor through a new and 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.