WHERE YOUR PAINTS COME FROM.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2644, 28 January 1908, Page 7

WHERE YOUR PAINTS COME FROM.

The animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms are all drawn upon for the materials from which to manufacture the colours one finds in a paint box. The earth from Sienna in Italy is, in its natural state, raw sienna, and when burned it is burnt sienna, while raw and burnt umbria is also an earth found in the neighbourhood of Umbria. Chinese white is made from zinc, and ivory black and bone black are manufactured from burnt ivory chips. The yellow sap of a Siamese tree is caught by the natives in cocoanut shells, and we get it as gamboge. The cochineal insect provides us with those gorgeous carmines, and the beautiful crimson, scarlet, and purlie lakes. Prussian blue was discovered by an accident, and is made by fusing horses' hoofs and other refuse with potassium carbonate ; while the precious lapis lazuli provides us with ultramarine, which, when genuine, is very expensive. From the cuttle fish we get sepia : lamp black is the soot derived from burning certain resinous substances, and blue black is obtained from the burnt stalks of the vine. .The composition of Indian ink is known only to the Chinese, but it is said to be made from burnt camphor. Native vermilion or cinnamon is made from quicksilver ore ; lodide of mercury supplies us with scarlet, and the soot of wood ashes with bistre. The gum of the mastic tree, found in the Grecian archipelago, supplies mastic, the basis of the well-known varnish of that name.