Recipes and processes


076r_1 (Making Wood Green)

Translated recipe:

<id>p076r_1</id>
<head>Making <m>Wood</m> Green</head>
<ab>
Take one quart of <m>white vinegar</m>, one ounce of green, and one ounce of <m>rock alum</m>. Mix them together and pour all your ingredients into a <m>leaded</m> pot over fire without taking any air. Then put your pot in <m>manure</m> for 15 days, after which time remove and boil your materials for three hours.</ab>

Materials:

Note: due to the small amounts of wood I am working with, I am halving the amounts indicated in the manuscript recipe


Process:

  1. Put on eye protection, mask, lab coat, and gloves.
  2. Combine white vinegar, verdigris, and rock alum in stainless steel pot; carefully mix contents.
  3. Place pot on hot plate in fume hood until very hot, but do not boil.
  4. Warm empty jars in hot water to avoid temperature shock and shattering. Place the three sheets of dry wood in one jar and the soaked sheets of wood in another; pour hot dye from pot into each jar until it covers the wood but you can still close lid without contents overflowing. If needed put a small block of scrap wood just beneath the lid to ensure veneers remain completely covered by dye.
  5. Label lid of jar with wood type, dye type, and date.
  6. Drain any remaining dye into a separate glass jar and label with date. Reserve for later use.
  7. Place jar in crock pot filled with 12 cups water set to warm. Let rest covered for 15 days.
  8. After 15 days pour contents of one jar plus half of the reserved excess dye from before into a beaker; place pot on on hot plate in fume hood heat until boiling for three hours. Periodically check for change of color, if any.
  9. After three hours remove from heat. Take out veneers and let them rest of a paper towel until dry; record and photograph findings. Cut small strip from side of veneer with the jewler's saw to check penetration of the dye.
  10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 with second jar of wood and dye. Can be done simultaneously.
  11. Pour all remaining dye into labeled waste stream container; carefully rinse all glassware and pour rinsewater into same container.


Safety Considerations:

Using Safety Data Sheet for copper acetate:


076r_2 (Making Wood Red)

Translated recipe:

<id>p076r_2</id>
<head>Making <m>Wood</m> Red</head>
<ab>
Take one quart of <m>old urine</m>, three ounces of <m>madder</m>, and one ounce of <m>rock alum</m>, put all of the ingredients into your pot. Then follow the previously described green technique.</ab>

Materials:

Note: due to the small amounts of wood I am working with, I am halving the amounts indicated in the manuscript recipe


Process:

  1. Put on eye protection, lab coat, and gloves.
  2. Grind madder root using mortar and pestle (consistency should be as fine as you can manage, similar to preparing madder lake)
  3. Check ph of old urine and record (I did not have any ph strips available to test during collection earlier in the week so I have no idea what the ph will be)
  4. Combine urine, ground madder root, salt, and tap water in stainless steel pot. Place pot on hot plate until contents very hot but not boiling.
  5. Warm empty jars in hot water to avoid temperature shock and shattering. Place the three sheets of dry wood in one jar and the soaked sheets of wood in another; pour hot dye from pot into each jar until it covers the wood but you can still close lid without contents overflowing. If needed put a small block of scrap wood just beneath the lid to ensure veneers remain completely covered by dye.
  6. Label lid of jar with wood type, dye type, and date.
  7. Drain any remaining dye into a separate glass jar and label with date. Reserve for later use.
  8. Place jars with wood and dye in crock pot filled with 12 cups water set to warm. Let rest covered for 15 days.
  9. After 15 days pour contents of jars plus half of the reserved excess dye from before into beaker; place on hot plate in fume hood heat until boiling for three hours. Pull a piece of wood out at hour 1, 2, and 3 to check progression of color, if any.
  10. After three hours remove from heat. Take out veneers and let them rest of a paper towel until dry; record and photograph findings. Cut small strip from side of veneer with the jewler's saw to check penetration of the dye.
  11. Repeat steps 9 and 10 with second jar of wood and dye. Can be done simultaneously.
  12. Drain remaining liquid contents dye in the sink. Put remaining madder grounds in a plastic bag and throw away.

Materials and adaptations for reconstruction


Wood veneers

According to Pierre Ramond wood veneers were exclusively produced by skilled workers using large frame saws to cut sheets as thin as 1-2 mm until the nineteenth century, but with the advent of industrialization new methods such as slicing or rotary cutting came into wide use. Even though these new manufacturing methods allowed for quicker sheet production they also required extensive pre- and post- treatments including steaming or boiling logs for varying lengths of time according to the hardness of the wood and open air of kiln drying after cutting; sawed veneers required no such treatments and are thus considered superior in quality as the natural color and fiber of the wood is not changed. Due to lower manufacturing costs and faster production times the majority of veneers produced today are sliced or rotary cut, with sawn veneers, if available, costing much more [Pierre Ramond, Marquetry, trans.Jacqueline Derenne et al., (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2002), 75]. Beyond the issue of historical authenticity, modern treatment methods (steaming, drying, ageing, etc.) cause changes in the levels of tannic acids in the wood that may very well affect the efficacy of the dyeing process. Due to constraints in both cost and availability for the purpose of these reconstructions I elected to use three different hardwoods commonly used in marquetry and furniture making, all varying in hardness and natural lightness of color: lindenwood (also called basswood, the softest and lightest in color), mahogany, and cherry (darkest and hardest). I sourced all of these veneers from a local art supply store and all sheets were cut to a thickness of 1/16”, roughly 1.6 mm (although actual thicknesses varied slightly from sheet to sheet). While the method of production used for these sheets is not indicated on the product the low cost and availability is likely an indication they were made using modern mechanized techniques.

After lightly sanding each larger sheet of veneer with 1000 grit sandpaper I cut each panel down into 2”x3” pieces. To easily distinguish one wood type from another I removed two corners from the lindenwood pieces, one corner from the mahogany, and kept the cherry wood intact. While our author-practitioner gives no direction on how the wood you intend to dye should be prepared before soaking in the bath, based on directions found in other dye recipes from the seventeenth and eighteenth century and suggestions in conservation literature I chose to soak one set of veneers in water for a period of 48 hours before dyeing while the other set was added dry. In Chapter XXV of his 1675 publication Polygraphice, William Salmon instructs that all materials intended to be dyed must first be boiled in alum water, and over a century later in the manual The laboratory, or, School of arts, Godfrey Smith likewise directs that “the wood is first to be thoroughly soaked in alum water.” Similarly noting that the acidity and porosity of wood will affect the final dye result, in their attempts to recreate early synthetic dyes from the 19th century van Bommel and Fantini soaked their woods in either plain water or a solution of 5% ammonia or salt water. In order to purge some of the water from the pre-soaked wood the pieces were briefly wiped down and set to rest on a paper towel about 30 minutes before adding dye.

2015_001fall_labsem_McClure_WoodDyeMaterials_20151212_1.JPG2015_001fall_labsem_McClure_WoodDyeMaterials_20151212_2.JPG

Incubating dyes/ finding a replacement for composting manure

In addition to the issue of sourcing woods, the method laid out for all the dyeing recipes in fol. 76r specifies resting the pot containing your dye bath and wood in manure for a period of 15 days. As thermophilic bacteria are the primary agents of composting, burying in manure was a common method for keeping an item at a relatively warm, stable temperature for a long period of time. Unfortunately, procuring a sufficiently large pile of composting manure in New York during the winter proved impractical, so I needed to devise an alternative means of incubating the soaking wood and dye. The first difficulty in overcoming this particular methodological obstacle was determining the temperature of the incubator. As the bacteria break down compost over time the temperature of the pile may fluctuate between 32 degrees to over 70 degrees celsius. While these temperatures may vary depending on the size of the pile, available nutrients for bacteria, and ambient temperature, it’s clear that manure can sustain relatively warm environments for extended periods of time. I ultimately decided to let the soaking samples rest at a comparatively high temperature within the range of possibilities given above as another wood dyeing recipe on fol. 78r specifies laying your vessel containing the dye in “very warm horse dung” for a period of eight or nine days. After extensive consideration and testing I found that with the lid on my generic brand Crock-pot keeps water at a temperature of roughly 66 degrees celsius when set to “warm,” which is within the upper bounds of temperatures expected in composting manure.

2015_001fall_labsem_McClure_WoodDyeMaterials_20151212_3.JPG


Other dyeing recipes (wood and similar materials used in inlay work like bone, horn, ivory, etc.)


FROM BNF MANUSCRIPT

From fol. 76r

<id>p076r_3</id>
<head>Making <m>Wood</m> Blue</head>
<ab>
Take one quart of <m>urine</m>, as above, one ounce of <m>alum</m>, and two drams of <m>sal ammoniac</m>, and half an ounce of <m>woad</m>, grind it all to powder. Then follow the previously described green technique.</ab>


<id>p076r_4</id>
<head>For <sup>Making</sup> Purple <m>Wood</m></head>
<ab>
Take one quart of <m>urine</m> and one ounce of <m>alum</m> and ten drams of <m>sal ammoniac</m> and one <sup>dram</sup> of lacquer, then do as previously described.</ab>


<id>p076r_5</id>
<head>For <sup>Making</sup> Yellow <m>Wood</m></head>
<ab>
Take urine, as above, and two ounces of <m>woad</m>, one ounce of <m>fustet</m> and two drams of <m>sal ammoniac</m>, then do as previously described.</ab>

————————

<id>p078v_3</id>
<head>To make <m>bone</m> or <m>horn</m> green</head>
<ab>Take <m>verdigris</m> and soak it in strong <m>vinegar</m>, and soak your <m>bone</m> or <m>horn</m> for an hour, and then apply as needed.</ab> [NOTE: This recipe actually seems to give instructions for preparing your wood before dyeing, although I seriously doubt this recipe would work well]

<id>p010r_4</id>
<head>Purple color</head>
<ab><pro>Painters</pro> make it beautifully by first applying an undercoat of ordinary<m>azur</m>, or better yet <m>azur d’email</m>,and then they glaze it with <m>lacquer</m>, which will be more appropriate for this if you mix in <m>alum</m>, which will give it a violet tint depending on the quantity that you mix in.</ab> [Lots of wood dye recipes utilize alum washes to lighten or otherwise change the color of dyed materials]



<id>p060v_3</id>
<head><m>Wood</m> color</head>
<ab>
Apply one <m>bister</m> layer and then an handful of varnish.</ab> [NOTE: Bistere in middle French means pigment and simply color in modern English]


<id>p038v_1</id>
<head>Black color for dyeing </head>
<ab>Take <m>lye made from quicklime</m> and <m>white lead</m>, mix and leave to soak and you will have a dark brown dye, and reiterating the same you will make black. Try other colours with the <m>lye made of lime</m>.</ab>


<id>p038v_6</id>
<head>Crimson</head>
<ab>Because one “aulne” costs seven or eight lb. to dye, they use <sup>cloth</sup>worth seven or eight francs. But if one wants something beautiful, one should buy some white cloth worth fifteen francs an “aulne” and dye it with some pure crimson woad & a little cochineal. Black fabrics are very fine because the dye is inexpensive.</ab> [Another recipe referring to dying textiles]


<id>p013r_2</id>
<head>To dye</head>
<ab>Mix <m>sal ammoniac</m> and <m>vitriol</m> and boil them together. Then mix in some <m>laque</m> or <m>vert-de-gris</m> and <m>azur</m> or similar color, and dye, which will not come off if the animal does not shed. Non bona.</ab> [NOTE: It seems this recipe is about dyeing the hair/fur of a living animal…]


<id>p040r_1</id>
<head>Dye</head>
<ab>Some take Lapathium acutum maius, which seems to be rhapontic rhubarb or “vinette”, and using the root, which is yellow in summer, they dye threads and similar things.</ab> [This isn’t actually giving a recipe for dye, but for a source of pigment]


<id>p063r_6</id>
<head><m>Verdigris</m> and other very beautiful gray green</head>
<ab>One must not grind it only with <m>water</m>, because this makes it fade. To obtain a beautiful distemper, some people crush it with <m>vinegar</m>. But this makes it turn pale and become whitish. To make it beautiful, crush it with <m>urine</m> and leave it to dry. Then, when you will want, crush it with <m>oil</m>. And after you have collected it with the palette, instead of finishing cleaning the <m>marble</m>, crush it there with <m>scudegrun</m> and you will have a very beautiful green.</ab>


<id>p063r_5</id>
<head><m>Bister</m></head>
<ab>It is only used in distemper. One gets from it a <m>wood</m> color.</ab> [NOTE: see in conjunction with p063r_6 and p060v_3]


<id>p071r_2</id>
<head>Streaked <m>wood</m></head>
<ab>The <m>elm</m>has in its knotty roots beautiful veins streaked with grey and black, and the <m>root of the maple tree</m> as well, but you must choose the grain of the <m>wood</m> carefully. <m>Maple wood</m> is given a certain yellow color and then varnished.</ab> [One of the few times our author practitioner actually discusses specific varieties of wood in terms of use/visual properties.]


<id>p073r_3</id>
<head>For orange color</head>

<ab>Take the <m>water</m> where the <m>quicklime</m> will have soaked and some <m>turmeric</m>, and put them one with the other, and then you will put them on your <m>wood</m>.</ab>


<id>p073r_3</id>
<head>For degreasing <m>bone</m> or <m>horn</m></head>

<ab>You must boil them in <m>quicklime</m>, and be sure that there is always <m>water</m>, and take a well-cleaned pan, and when they are clean, boil them in the <m>ashes of vine shoots</m>, and put it inside the hottest pot you can, and put some <m>verdigris</m> into the <pro>goldsmith's</pro> pot of <m>water</m>, and leave for some time and you will see a most beautiful green color.</ab>


<id>p073r_4</id>
<head>For making gray <m>wood</m></head>

<ab>Take <m>alum</m> with <m>river water</m>and boil them together. Then take <m>river water</m> with some <m>bran</m>, pour in the <m>bran</m> and crush them together. Take <m>iron filings</m> and <m>sulfur</m> and <m>verdigris</m> and <m>fuller's earth</m> <figure/>, and boil it all together, and crush <m>maplewood</m> which will have been soaked in <m>water</m> of <m>alum</m> and <m>rainwater</m>, and put it to boil together. All of this can be done better in a large crucible.</ab>


<id>p076v_2</id>
<head>Making black gommiche</head>
<ab id=”p076v_b2”>
Take some <m>glue</m> and dilute it with <m>vinegar</m> and melt it until it is very clear. Take <m>lampblack</m> or another black, and dilute them together. Then apply the mixture over <m>wood</m>.</ab>


<id>p076v_3</id>
<head>For white <supp>gommiche</supp></head>
<ab>Take white wax and ceruse, melt them together and apply the mixture to wood or to anything else.</ab>


<id>p079r_1</id>
<head>Making <m>gray wood</m></head>
<ab>
Take some <m>sandstone</m> powder, _ _ _, <m>iron</m> filings, scrap <m>iron</m>, <m>alum</m>, du <m>noir de courroieur</m>, <m>copperas</m>, and <m>rock alum</m>.</ab>


<id>p075v_1</id>
<head>Making grey <m>wood</m></head>
<ab>One must take three demi-sestiers of <m>iron</m> filings per 18 deniers of <m>rock alum</m>, and for as much <supp>18 deniers</supp> <m>green copperas</m> for six deniers of <m>verdigris</m>, pitch and a quart of <m>currier water</m>; and if you can’t find any, use <m>rainwater</m> [blank] of a slight degree. </ab>


<id>p075v_4</id>
<head>Recipe for coloring all <m>wood</m></head>
<ab>To make it black, one must soak the wood in <m>olive oil</m> and tough <m>meat</m> in a similar case for four or five days, then boil it in where the wood has soaked for one hour, then take it <supp>the wood</supp> out of the oil. Take some <m>natural sulphur</m> if possible otherwise take another<sup><m>sulphur</m></sup>. Cover the aforementioned <m>wood</m> with this powder, until it cools, and bring it back to a boil. Upon boiling one will see whether or not it is black enough. If it is not, take the aforementioned powder and apply some over the <m>wood</m> and boil it.</ab>


——————

FROM OTHER HISTORICAL RECIPE BOOKS__

In his Polygraphices (1675), William Salmon combines dyeing techniques for wood, horn, and bone into one chapter (XXXV). In the first recipe he specifically mentions “Elder, Box, Mulberry-tree, Pear-tree, Nut-tree;” all light woods. Here are a couple of examples (use this url to start: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/salmon1675/0173):

“To dye bones green” in Salmon, Polygraphices, p. 222

“VII. To dye wood, horns, or bones red” in Salmon, Polygraphices, p. 223

“IX. To dye them green like emeralds” in Salmon, Polygraphices, p. 223

Salmon’s recipes for “Dying yarn, linen, cloth, and the like” begins on page 225.

**Salmon also has interesting “gemstone” colors on page 104:






“On staining wood red” in Dossie, The handmaid to the arts, 2nd ed. (1764) p. 493-4

“Of staining wood green” in Dossie, The handmaid to the arts, 2nd ed. (1764) p. 497

ENDNOTE ON DYEING WOODS in Dossie, The handmaid to the arts, 2nd ed. (1764) p. 499

Preparation of ivory, bone, or horn for staining required specific pre-treatment: Dossie, The handmaid to the arts, 2nd ed. (1764) p. 499

Recipes for specific dyes for ivory, bone, or horn are essentially the same as with wood staining above:





The Laboratory, or, School of arts: containing a large collection of valuable secrets, experiments, and manual operations in arts and manufactures… (1799)



Merrifield recipes