(in progress)
using Gum arabic as a binder
Jean (Jehan) le Bègue, De Coloribus Faciendis, 14311:
25. To make letters of silver. Take three parts of quicksilver [mercury]2 and a fourth part of tin, melt them together, and let the mixture cool; then grind it on a stone and temper it with a solution of gum-arabic; write with it and let it dry, and polish it with the tooth of a dog or other animal, fit for the purpose and the letters will be beautiful and brilliant.
Syriac Alchemical Recipe (1400s-1500s)3:
“The Making of Gold ‘ Water’ for Writing”
Solution of gold (Ar. hall al-dahab). Take a porcelain bowl or
a stone cutting board. Gum arabic is scratched until it
becomes like honey. Rub the bowl with it. A leaf of gold is
flattened on it and it is crushed with the gum until it gets
thinner. Write with it.
using glair
Cennino d’Andrea Cennini, Il Libro del Arte, 1400s4
How to Grind Gold and Silver for Use as Colors
…take a number of leaves of fine gold according to the work you want to do, or to write, with it; say ten or twenty leaves. Put them on your porphyry5 slab, and work this gold up well with some well-beaten white of egg [glair]; and then put it into a little glazed dish. Put in enough tempera to make it flow from the quill or the brush; and you may do any work you want to with it. You may likewise grind it with gum arabic, for use on parchment. And if you are doing leaves of trees, mix with this gold a little very finely ground green, for the dark leaves. And in this way, by mixing it with other colors, you may make shot effects to suit yourself.6
Sources
- As translated on page 58 of Merrifield, Mary P. 1999. The Book of Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Arts of Painting: Original Texts with English Translations. Dover Publications.
Accessible online here: https://archive.org/details/medievalrenaissa0000unse_c2w5 ↩︎ - Interesting aside about quicksilver: “Porporino,” a composition of mercury, tin or brass, and sulphur was sometimes heated to produce a yellow metallic powder. This was mixed with gum or egg whites to substitute for gold. (Merrifield, pgs. n.136, n30) ↩︎
- British Library manuscript, MSS Egerton 709, fol. 57r6–10; Oriental 1593, fol. 30r19–23. Excerpt published in “’Alchemical’ Inks in the Syriac Tradition,” Matteo Martelli in Traces of
Ink, Brill: 2021. This chapter is available online at JSTOR. ↩︎ - Cennini, Cennino. 2022. IL Libro dell’Arte, o Trattato della Pittura (Classic Reprint). London, England: Forgotten Books, p. 102. Accessible online here: https://archive.org/details/illibrodellarte1933cenn/page/n9/mode/2up ↩︎
- For more details about this stone, check out this article: https://patinegallery.com/all-posts/2020/11/8/porphyre-the-fascinating-stone ↩︎
- Am I including these last sentences to show that other shiny colors besides gold and silver are period? Maaaaaybe. Beam Paints has some really nice ones, btw. ↩︎
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