68 ON COLORING. 



as may be most convenient. Then draw, with the following 

 preparation, the parts of the figure intended for yellow, green, or 

 red. Alum, powdered, one ounce, sugar of lead half an ounce, 

 warm water three ounces — mix them in a phial, and shake them 

 often for three days ; afterwards add one scruple of potash, and 

 one scruple of powdered chalk, let it stand and settle. Then 

 pour off the clear liquor, and thicken it with gum arable suffi- 

 ciently to prevent its spreading when applied to the cloth with 

 the pencil ; add a little powdered charcoal, if you please, to 

 the mixture, to make the drawings more visible. Let it then be 

 thoroughly dried by a fire, heating it as much as can be safely 

 done without scorching it. Then draw with the following, the 

 parts of the figure intended to be black. Take iron filings, turn- 

 ings, small nails, or iron otherwise divided into small pieces, and 

 put them into vinegar, with maple bark, or galls, sumach berries, 

 and a litde logwood — let them digest till it forms a very black 

 ink. Mix with this ink gum arable, till it is sufficiently thicken- 

 ed, and apply it wherever black is wanted, be it on the alumed 

 parts, or on those before untouched by that mordant. Dry it 

 by the fire as before. Do you want blue or green ? Take in- 

 digo one ounce, potash one ounce and a half, quick lime half an 

 ounce, brown sugar three ounces, and boil them in three gills of 

 water, till the mixture loses its blue color and becomes green or 

 yellow, with a copper-colored or blue scum. Keep it in a well 

 stopped bottle, and when wanted for use, pour out a little in a 

 tea cup or wine glass, and drop slowly into it muriatic acid till it 

 cease to effervesce. Then, if it be not sufficiently thickened by 

 the sugar, add gum arable, and apply it to the parts of the alum- 

 ed figure which you intend for green, and to jiarts not alumed, 

 intended to be made blue. Dry again as before. If a dark 

 olive be preferred to a black, or desired as an additional color, 

 dissolve half an ounce of copperas in three ounces of water, and 

 thicken it with gum arable, and let it be applied to such parts as 

 you wish should assume this color. Sulphate of copper, (blue 

 vitriol) used in the same manner, will give an olive inclining to 

 yellow. In like manner other mordants may be applied, and a 

 great variety of colors produced, by subsequently immersing it 



