Grand-Grandfather's
Useful Antique Recipes
- artists' oil colors -
content -
recipes from the 'Household
Cylopedia', 1881
- PAINTS AND COLORS -
12. ARTISTS' OIL COLORS.
• About coloring materials.
The composition of colors as respects those leading tests of excellence, preservation of general tints, and permanency of brilliant hues, during their exposure for many centuries to the impairing assaults of the atmosphere, is a preparation in which the ancient preparers of these oily compounds, have very much excelled, in their skilfulness, the moderns. It is a fact, that the ancient painted walls, to be seen at Dendaras, although exposed for many ages to the open air, without any covering or protection, still possess a perfect brilliancy of color, as vivid as when painted, perhaps 2000 years ago.
The Egyptians mixed their colors with some gummy substance, and applied them detached from each other without any blending or mixture. They appeared to have used six colors, viz., white, black, blue, red, yellow, and green; they first covered the canvas entirely with white, upon which they traced the design in black, leaving out the lights of the ground color. They used minium for red, and generally of a dark tinge. Pliny mentions some painted ceilings in his day in the town of Ardea, which had been executed at a date prior to the foundation of Rome. He expresses great surprise and admiration at their freshness, after the lapse of so many centuries. These are, undoubtedly, evidences of the excellence of the ancients in their art of preparing colors. In the number of them there is, probably, not much difference between the ancient and modern knowledge.
The ancients seem to have been possessed of some colors of which we are ignorant, while they were unacquainted, themselves, with some of those more recently discovered. The improvements of chemistry have, certainly, in later times, enriched painting with a profusion of tints, to which, in point of brilliancy at least, no combination of primitive colors known to the ancients could pretend; but the rapid fading in the colors of some of the most in many of the productions from our esteemed master, Sir Joshua Reynolds, which, although they have not issued from his pallet more than 40 years, carry an to lose, in many instances, the identity of the subjects they represent. On this head (and a most important one it is), the superiority of the ancient compounders
completely carries away the palm of merit.
• To mix the mineral substances in Linseed Oil.
Take 1 lb. of the genuine mineral green, prepared and well powdered, 1 lb. of the precipitate of copper, 1 1/2 lbs. of refiners' blue verditer, 3 lbs. of white lead, dry powdered, 3 oz. of sugar of lead powdered fine. Mix the whole of these ingredients in linseed oil, and grind them in a levigating mill, passing it through until quite fine; it will thereby produce a bright mineral pea-green paint, preserve a blue tint, and keep any length of time in any climate without injury, by putting oil or water over it.
To use this color for house or ship painting, take 1 lb. of the green color paint, with 1 gill of pale boiled oil, mix them well together, and this will produce a strong peagreen paint: the tint may be varied at pleasure by adding a further quantity of white lead ground in linseed oil. This color will stand the weather and resist salt water; it may also be used for flatting rooms, by adding 3 lbs. of white lead ground in half linseed oil and half turpentine, to 1 lb. of the green, then to be mixed up in turpentine spirits, fit for use. It may also be used for painting Venetian window blinds, by adding to 1 lb. of the green paint 10 oz. of white lead, ground in turpentine, then to be mixed up in turpentine varnish for use. In all the aforsaid preparations it will retain a blue tint, which is very desirable. When used for blinds, a small quantity of Dutch pink may be put to the white lead if the color is required of a yellow cast.
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