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The treatises of Benvenuto Cellini on goldsmithing and sculpture cover

The treatises of Benvenuto Cellini on goldsmithing and sculpture

Chapter 79: FOOTNOTES:
By Benvenuto Cellini
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About This Book

A combined manual of goldsmithing and sculpture lays out practical, workshop-focused instructions and recipes for metalworking processes, including niello, filigree, enamelling, gem setting, diamond cutting and tinting, gilding, etching, medal making, various casting methods for vessels and large bronze figures, and furnace construction. Chapters present step-by-step procedures, material preparations, tool use, and formulas for chemical treatments and colours. Technical anecdotes and illustrative examples appear throughout, conveying common workshop problems and their solutions in an informal, spoken-register voice. The work functions as both a craftsman's handbook and a record of traditional techniques and workshop practice.

CHAPTER XXXV. HOW TO MAKE AQUAFORTIS FOR PARTING.

Aquafortis for parting[198] is made thus. You take 8 lbs. of burnt rock alum[199] & an equal quantity of the best saltpetre, and 4 lbs. of Roman vitriol, & put them altogether into the alembic,[200] add to these things a little aquafortis that has already been used, exercising your discretion as to the quantity. And in order to give a good luting[201] to your alembic take horse-dung, iron filings & brick dust in equal proportions, and mix them up with the yolk of a hen’s egg, then smear the mixture over the alembic as far as the furnace will allow. Then for the rest put it to a moderate fire, as the wont is.

FOOTNOTES:

[198] Partire.

[199] Allume di rôcca arso. Prof. Church tells me that this is probably sulphate of alumina, from alum shale.

[200] Boccia. Biringoccio in the fourth book of his ‘Pirotechnica,’ Venice, 1540, Chap. I., gives an illustrated description both of such an alembic and of how aquafortis for parting is distilled. See also the French edition of the same book translated by ‘Jaques Vincent.’ Rouen, 1627.

[201] Loto: the closing of the joints.