§ VII. For painting on glass.

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.

§ VII. For painting on glass.


LXVII. How to draw on glass.

Grind lamp-black with gum-water and some common salt. With this and a pen, a hair pencil, or any thing you please, draw your design on the glass; and afterwards shade and paint it with any of the following compositions.


LXVIII. A colour for grounds on glass.

1. Take iron filings, and Dutch yellow beads, equal parts. If you want it to have a little red call, add a little copper's filings. With a steel smillar, grind all these together on a thick and strong copperplate, or on porphyry. Then add a little gum-arabic, borax, common salt and clear water. Mix these a little fluid, and put the composition in a phial for use.

2. When you come to make use of it, you have nothing to do but with a hair pencil lay it quite flat on the design you shall have drawn the day before; and having left this to dry also for another day, with the quill of a turkey, the nib of which shall not be split, you heighten the lights in the same manner as you do with Crayons on blue paper. Whenever you put more coats of the above composition one upon another, the made, you must be sensible, will naturally be stronger. And when this is finished you lay your colours for garments and complexions as follows.


LXIX. Preparation of lake, for glass.

Grind the lake with a water impregnated with gum and salt; and then make use of it with the brush. - The shading is operated by laying a double, treble, or more coats of the colour, where you want it darker. And so it is of all the following compositions of colours.


LXX. Preparation of the blue purple, for glass.

Make a compound of lake and indigo, grinded together with gum and salt water; and life it as directed in the preceding article.


LXXI. Preparation of the green, for glass.

Indigo mixed with a proportionable quantity of gamboge, and grinded together as above, will answer the intended purpose.


LXXII. Preparation of the yellow for the same.

Gamboge grinded with salt water only.


LXXIII. Preparation of the white.

You have only to heighten much the white parts with a pen.


LXXIV. The proper varnish to be laid on glass after painting.

Boil, in oil of nuts, some litharge, lead filings, and white copperas calcined. When done and cold, lay it all over the colours which you put on the glass.


LXXV. How to paint on glass without fire.

Take gain arabic and dissolve it in water with common salt, bottle, and keep it. With this liquor, if you grind the colours you intend to paint with, they will fix and eat in the glass. Should you find they do not enough, increase only the dose of salt.