Painting Unpolished Marble

["Peggy B. Perazzo" <perazzo@xxxxxxxxx>]

While this is not a modern method used to paint on marble, I thought you
might find the following information from the 1850s interesting.   Peggy
Perazzo

"The Marble-Workers? Manual", translated from the French, By M. L.
Booth, 1856.

ANCIENT PROCESS FOR PAINTING ON MARBLES.

§  186.  We have already said and proved several times, that many of the
new inventions are merely the reproductions of ancient methods, which
have been abandoned for some unknown cause.  We find a new proof of this
in the Dictionnaire de l?Industrie, published in 1785, and it is
somewhat remarkable that, even at that period, this invention was not
given as a new one.

We make the following extract from page 408, vol. 4, of the Encyclopedie
de Diderot, where the article may be found:

"In order to prepare a liquor which will penetrate into the interior of
Marble in such a manner that one can paint on the surface, designs which
seem to be within the material, it is necessary to proceed in the
following manner:

"Take of agua fortis and agua regia, each two ounces, one ounce of salts
of ammonia, two drachms of the best spirits of wine, as much gold as can
be bought for a hundred pence, and two drachmas of pure silver.  When
you are furnished with these materials and have calcined the silver, put
it in a vial, and having poured upon it the two ounces of aqua fortis,
leave it to evaporate; you will thus have a water which will at first
give a blue color, and finally a black.  Calcine the gold in the same
manner, put it in the vial, and, pouring the aqua regia upon it, leave
it to evaporate.  Finally pour your spirits of wine upon the salts of
ammonia, leaving it also to evaporate; you will thus have a golden
colored water which will furnish different colors.

"In this manner you can make many dyes of various colors, by the use of
other metals.  This being done, by the aid of the two others you can
paint whatever you may wish upon the softest kind of white Marble,
repeating the operation every day for some time by adding new liquor to
the same figures; you will then find that the painting has penetrated
the Marble in such a manner that, in cutting it in any manner you may
please, it will always present the same figure on both sides."

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