XXI. A composition to make a relief fit to gild over, or even to raise an embroidery.

Valuable Secrets concerning Arts and Trades:
or Approved Directions, from the best Artists, for the Various Methods...
Printed by Thomas Hubbard,
Norwich, 1795Chap. IV. Secrets relative to masticks, cements, sealing-wax, &c. &c.


1. Take one pound of lintseed oil; sandarac, mastich, burgundy pitch, affa-fætida, new wax, and turpentine, equal quantities, four ounces of each.

2. Pound all, and put it in a varnished new pipkin, to boil for two hours, over a slow fire. Then keep it in that same pot to make your paste at any time afterwards with it, and as you want it.

3. This paste is made as follows. Take ceruse and umber reduced into a subtile powder, which you dilute, with the above composition, in sufficient quantity to make a sort of dough with it; observing never to-make more of it at a time than you think to employ directly; for when, dry, it becomes as hard as marble.

4. The method of using it, is to draw, on whatever you will, whether cloth, linen, silk, thread plaister, &c. the outlines of what you want to have raised in relief, as arms, trophies, figures, fruits, flowers, &c. according to your design, or fancy. Then you fill up those sketches, and raise them with the above paste, while it is soft; and, when it begins to dry, you gild, silver, or paint it ever, as you like.

5. You may paint also the ground of those reliefs with whatever colours you please, and enrich it with gold spangles, if you chuse. The way to do it, is by laying first a coat of varnish of isinglass and rosin melted together.

N. B. There is a work of this kind to be seen, at Vienna, on the great altar of the Virgin Mary.