Grand-Grandfather's
Useful Antique Recipes
- all sorts of paints and
colors - 8
-
recipes from the 'Household
Cylopedia', 1881
- PAINTS AND COLORS -
Vitreous oxide of lead (litharge), is of no other use in painting than to free oils from their greasy particles, for the purpose of communicating to them a drying quality. Red litharge, however, ought to be preferred to the greenish yellow; it is not so hard, and answers better for the purpose to which it is destined.
When painters wish to obtain a common color of the ochrey kind, and have no boiled oil by them, they may paint with linseed oil, not freed from its greasy particles, by mixing with the color about 2 or 3 parts of litharge, ground on a piece of porphyry with water, dried, and reduced to fine powder, for 16 parts of oil. The color has a great deal of body, and dries as speedily as if mixed with drying oil.
• Siccitive Oil.
Boil together for 2 hours on a slow and equal fire, 1/2 oz. of litharge, as much calcined ceruse, and the same of terre d'ombre and talc, with 1 lb. of linseed oil, carefully stirring the whole time. It must be carefully skimmed and clarified. The older it grows the better it is. A quarter of a pint of this dryer is required to every pound of color.
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It is performed with water-colors on fresh plaster, or a wall laid with mortar not dry. This sort of painting has a great advantage by its incorporating with the mortar, and drying along with it becomes very durable.
The ancients painted on stucco, and we may remark in Vitruvius what infinite care they took in making the plastering of their buildings, to render them beautiful and lasting, though the modern painters find a plaster of lime and sand preferable to it.
• To Paint Fire-Places and Hearths.
The Genevese employ a kind of stone, known under the name of molasse, for constructing fire-places and stoves, after the German manner. This stone is brought from Saura, a village of Savoy, near Geneva. It has a grayish color, inclining to blue, which is very agreeable to the eye. This tint is similar to that communicated to common whitewashing with lime, chalk, or gypsum, the dullness of which is corrected by a particle of blue extract of indigo, or by charcoal black.
• To make Red Distemper for Tiles.
Dip a brush in water from a common lye, or in soapy water, or in water charged with a 20th part of the carbonate of potash (pearlash), and draw it over the tiles. This washing thoroughly cleanses them, and disposes all the parts of the pavement to receive the distemper.
When dry, dissolve in 8 pts. of water 1/2 lb. of Flanders glue; and while the mixture is boiling, add 2 lbs. of red ochre; mix the whole with great care. Then apply a stratum of this mixture to the pavement, and when dry apply a second stratum with drying linseed oil, and a third with the same red mixed up with size. When the whole is dry, rub it with wax.
• To Distemper in Badigeon.
Badigeon is employed for giving an uniform tint to houses rendered brown by time, and to churches. Badigeon, in general, has a yellow tint. That which succeeds best is composed of the saw-dust or powder of the same kind of stone and slacked lime, mixed up in a bucket of water holding in solution 1 lb. of the sulphate of alumina (alum). It is applied with a brush.
At Paris, and in other parts of France, where the large edifices are constructed of a soft kind of stone, which is yellow, and sometimes white when it comes from the quarry, but which in time becomes brown, a little ochre de rue is substituted for the powder of the stone itself, and restores to the edifice its original tint.
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Parts of This text was taken from: http://members.xoom.com/mspong/paints.html
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