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Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture

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Smith, G. / The laboratory; or, School of arts: containing a large collection of valuable secrets, experiments, and manual operations in arts and manufactures, highly useful to gilders, jewellers, enamellers, goldsmiths, dyers, cutlers, pewterers, joiners, japanners, book-binders, plasterers, artists, and to the workers in metals in general; and in plaster of paris, wood, ivory, bone, horn, and other materials
(1799)

[Part VI.] Of coral work,   pp. 292-293


Page 292


                    ifii LA-BORATORY.
of wine, wi1ch is strong enough to fir      gont-power;
pu   it intO a sand bath, and let it remrain until it i§
dissolved aS muchY as possible ; then let it cool; strai it
firodgh a cloth, into a, gfast, so as to separafd i dros
tlfat might iave beeh in the higredienti. Tis varnish
you may lay on every tiiiig that has been silvered oT
tinned, three or ft6ur times, and it will resemible the
rightest gold. If yod Would have the gold-Colour Still
figh~r, you only add about two grains of trnieic,
two grains of the best hepatic d1oe, and onet gtain of
the finest drgon's blood, boiling them  up, and sttkin-
ng through a cldth into another glass.
  When you would Use it, set the glass into ariy vessel
full of water over a gentle charcoal fire, in order to mnake
the varnish fluid; it is also requisite to warm the work,
before yot begin to varnish it.
                   OF CORAL WORK.
7o make Red Coral Branches, for the Embellishment of
                         Grottos.
   TAKE clear resin, and dissolve it in a brass pan; to
one ounce thereof add two drachms of the finest ver-
milion ; when yodi have stirred them well together, and
have chose your twigs and branches, peeled 'and dried,
take a pencil and paint these twigs all over, whilst
the composition is warm, and shape them in imitation
of natural coral, out of a black-thorn; when done, hold
it over a gentle coal fire; turn the branch with your
hand about, and it will make it all over smooth and
even, as if polished.


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