Period Vitreous Paints, pt 1: Oops, this worked?

"...using for this ground scales of iron and of another rust found in iron pits, which is red, or else hard red haematitefinely ground, and with these pigments he shades the flesh, using alternately black and red, according to need." - Vasari (Dover translation p. 269)

"...and he gives you a color which he makes from well-ground copper filings;" -Cennini (Dover translation p. 111)

"Take copper that has been beaten thin and burn it in a small iron pan, until it has all fallen into a powder. Then take pieces of green glass and Byzantine blue glass and grind them separately between porphyry stones. Mix these three together in such a waythat there is one third of [copper] powder, one third of green, and one third of blue. Then grind them on the same stone very carefully with wine or urine, put them in an iron or lead pot, and with the greatest care paint the glass following the lines on the board." - Theophilus (Dover translation, p, 63)

Since I've made all but one of the period silver stain formulas I have found, I've decided to try and make vitreous paint. I started by building a frit smasher; it's not the period way to grind glass but it is infinitely easier for some initial tests.

Vasari seems to suggest you just paint with metal dust. Cennini is less specific, but doesn't contradict that. Theophilus clarifies a mixture of metal filings and glass, one part to two..

Just as with my silver stain tests, where I started off with purchased silver salts, I used my frit smasher (aka a frit piston) to smash pieces of scrap clear glass from my scrap buckets. I originally thought that this would require making paints from the same glass you are going to paint on, but nothing in the primary sources suggests that. I've seen reference that say modern vitreous paints are more "glass fluxes" and oxides, rather than actual glass; the latter would seem to be more akin to an enamel as we define it modernly. In this case I specifically sought out pieces from at least two different original sheets to avoid accidentally lining up CoEs.

Scrap glass pieces. I ended up using about twice this. My left hand for scale.

After just a few minutes work, with occasionally shaking of the pile to mix it up for better smashing

For those who don't do much with warm or hot glass, the Coefficient of Expansion relates to how quickly the warming or cooling glass expands or contracts. If you try to use two pieces of glass with incompatible CoEs, they will separate, usually fatally and sometimes explosively. I've generally seen a safe range being only one point in either direction (the common CoEs are 90 and 96 for fusible glass, with 103 also being common to lampworkers making beads. Borosilicate glass/Pyrex used by some lampworkers is CoE 33.) The bulbs I use for my ornaments class are COE 89; we use CoE 90 frit with them with no problem, but 96 is right out.

I rather expected the CoE would be a problem, and would spall or destroy the test chip. I used my frit smasher and generated a mess of pebbles and dust. Lacking anything more specific for filtering, I rolled the material in a piece of cheesecloth to get a grainy powder into a bowl.

Do not inhale this!

I ended up with a wooden bowl of rough clear glass powder. I turned to two purchased bags of metal filings, one iron and one copper. Bother are already a very very fine powder. I scooped a little of each into small wooden bowls using a palette knife, and added a similar amount of glass powder. As I stirred I worried there wouldn't be enough glass to "bind" the metal, and I added more of my clear powder. I ended up, accidentally, with approximately the ratio Theophilus called for. I did some cursory grinding on the palette, but it really didn't help. Testing it with a sable brush showed poor adhesion to the hairs, and the paint that left the brush was fairly poor, very weak with the copper-based batch. The iron batch was much better. As both metals are finely powdered I think I found a better portion of the powder bowl to draw from by luck.

Next go around, I will try to grind them up on porphyry, as period sources call for. I have been confused from time to time on what that means. Over Facebook THL Ian the Green gave me some clearer details from C&I pigment creation. He referenced this video, suggesting the technique at 6:29 and after 8:00 would be helpful. I will try and follow these next.

I placed them on some of my standard test chips, cut to size a binder full of test chips. Because it is glass powder and metal, I suspected that it would require a fairly high temperature to fire these paints; period sources definitely don't have the precise control we have, and in theory this strikes me as much more akin to glass fusing than normal paint firing. I used my standard cycle (which reaches 1250) and waited. And waited. And WAAAAITED.

The chips actually worked quite well. They didn't fire to the smooth and glossy shine of my modern Resuche paints, but they were opaque and well-adhered. I suspected, still, that they would be poorly fixed so I took the chips to my lightbox and hit them with a skewer I use for cleanup work. None of it scratched off.

The iron chip is "psychologically black" rather than optically black; When you see it, you know it's black. Your brain would remember it as black. It's actually fairly grey. The copper based pigment is a pretty color, but I would best describe it as somewhat like dried blood; It's lighter than bistre brown (which reminds me of old tree bark, it's a very dark color but not enough to be perceived as black) and it's a bit darker and more true than tracing brown, which to me has a reddish hint.

Overall, it was incredibly exciting to get working results with these very first attempts. I'm going to pursue more period steps immediately.

As an afterthought, I want to document something Master Avery shared on Facebook. I was totally unaware that you can reverse rust back into iron. The physical structure is destroyed, but the iron is recoverable. This is one way to get good, fine, filings; By using an oxidizer (and I will edit in what he offered, bleach I think) you can get the iron to rust. Then you can easily grind the rust. Putting it in charcoal and heating it appropriately will reverse the oxidation and leave iron. Very, very neat.


Lessons Learned/New Questions:
Holy cow, this worked.
It would work better if ground up more finely
     Use commercial powder/better sieved home made powder?
     Try the porphyry method
Does da Pisa have a recipe? Mappae Clavicula? The Bolognese manuscript? Have to check them...
I did very tiny batches, next time use my sandblasting mask to avoid any invisible dust inhalation.
How is color modulated? How is my modern tracing black so much darker? More iron? Or a darker mineral?
What will hematite look like? Pinkish, for sure, but...
What is Byzantine blue glass? A color, or a specific formula of glass? Byzantium is a purple...

Pattern Shears

Going to try something new at my Laurel's suggestion to see if it makes me happier with my cutting accuracy. A lot of the super-precise artisans I've met online seem to use pattern shears, and she suggested it for me.

I hopped over to my local supplier and got a pair. The owner, an awesome woman, had me find them in a box under a cabinet because she hasn't had demand for them in years. The shears give a seriously big gap (and I triple checked they were foil, not lead not mosaic). For a few bucks I grabbed them anyway, but kept researching. I found shears that kept saying they removed 1/32" for foil. The pair I got locally can not be 1/32". I ordered a pair (made by Mika Intl, via Amazon, but this is not a plug). They DEFINITELY remove less pattern:

"Squeeze-bottle grip" foil scissors, left, Mika Intl shears, right.

I'm working on cutting up a pattern right now, planning on starting to cut it tonight. Lots of curves and difficult cuts, it should be a great test if this method works better for me than working "English" (glass on pattern on lightbox).

ODH Scroll for Baroness Zafirah

I describe myself as the worst scribe in the Midrealm. Frankly, I don't self-identify as a scribe at all. I don't work on any kind of C&I in my free time or for enjoyment. I started taking scroll assignments in my capacity as a herald to assist the scribes when a court list came out on short notice or was larger than normal. I've made 3 or 4 paper scrolls, unhappy with any of them, before deciding that I should try and make a glass scroll and play to a strength while getting the job done.

Still, I never take assignments above the AoA level, I leave those for the practicing scribes. So when Estelle, my good friend and our chief Signet messaged me on Facebook offering a Dragon's Heart assignment I balked. Twice. She was insistent, I'd really want this one. I finally agreed and was not disappointed. But that left me needing to figure out how to make a scroll worthy of our highest service award beneath a peerage, one going to another dear friend.

I started sketching ideas on my train ride and sent her a picture. She immediately liked one of the designs so I worked on making it into a full cartoon.

It can save a lot of frustration to make the most difficult cuts first, so I started on the heart. Slowly removed the "dip" in tiny cuts until I didn't dare press my luck further:

I painted on the lines with some fear. I've made one other Dragon's Heart (a suncatcher, not a scroll) and the green glass turned from a translucent Hunter's green to an opaque green with translucent mottled spots. I had one sheet of glass and it pretty much had to work for me to be done on time.

A sheet of lined paper from my previous scroll was sitting behind the lightbox, and it came in very handy with this. Once dry I did some stickwork to clean up the lines, and fired it overnight. I was intensely relieved when the glass came out looking as it had going in.

I was going to leave it alone there, as with the other heart, but I wanted to make it stand out more and thought of shading/highlighting schemes. I hastily mixed some paint, applied a mat, and tried several schemes for highlighting either the entire piece or the individual scales.

The left half is shading the entire heart (though not as gradually as I planned). The right half shows a stippled highlight, scrubbed highlight, a stickwork edge, and combinations.

I then decided this mat was a LOT heavier than I desired and redid it with something more like what I wanted in the "real" shading. My consulting scribe said she thought the scrubbed scale-by-scale highlight looked best so I did more of that on the test piece.

That being settled, I ground and remixed my paint better, and did the real thing. An observation about scrubbing is below.

The red and clear fill-in for the "inner circle" was easy and routine. I found a Spectrum Baroque sheet that had faint tan streaks and chose it for the calligraphy border for interest, rather than use more of the Foxtail sheet from the inner circle. This time I mixed up some water-based paint, after speaking with Kirsten about it, rather than the clove oil paint before. I tried the dip pen, but it fought me again. I finally tried a tiny brush from the local hobby shop, intended for painting Warhammer miniatures. I discovered that a pretty good technique could be gotten from it. A painting bridge was extremely important to this work. The calligraphy isn't great, but this time I've come away believing that with a bit of practice I could make some respectable lettering. The water-based paint made half the difference as well.

As always, click to see larger versions.

I was very unhappy with the way it looked foiled. The gaps were rather large. I suspect it's because I use photoshop to make my own patterns at times, and the lines are fuzzy. I think I'm sabotaging certain custom patterns right from the start by not having crisp cutting lines. I eventually quit trying to evenly space the pieces, and instead I pulled them closer to the center. This caused heavier lines and larger gaps between the heart and the calligraphy border, but at that point it looked symmetrical and pleasing to the eye, at least I felt so.

As the woman who taught me stained glass once remarked, "black [patina] hides all manner of sins" and once the roundel was completed I was much less upset with the finished product.

Lessons Learned

1) Water based paint

    After I made the Acorn scroll Kirsten mentioned she does her calligraphy with water-based paint for easier clean-up. I often remark that glass is a forgiving art for a shaky non-artist like myself because we can clean our lines up a fair bit. I don't have a before picture of the calligraphy for a reason, scribes would faint. I intend to use water-based paint to "calligle" going forward. I'm next going to try it with a "kistka" tool used in pysanky painting, another Kirsten recommendation.

2) Mixing from the edge.

    It's very difficult to keep a pallete of paint well-mixed with a tiny brush while writing. I found if I started aiming for the edge of the puddle it was easier. In this picture you can see the paint separating (It is my understanding the "grey" water is the gum arabic separating out). You'll notice the edges remain black. I started quickly mixing that small area when loading my brush. I can't be sure if this actually means I got very little gum into my paint, but I had no problems getting it to hold the glass until firing. 

3) Scrubbing

     I think I've remarked before that I love the look a hog bristle scrubber leaves on paint. There can be tiny lines left behind that look rather like a carved blockprint. It's an imperfection that is beautiful to me, and there are very few of those in this world. I started off using Q-tips to scrub out paint but that got messy. I switched to a bristle brush and enjoyed the look much better. The line between shading and highlighting is not as crisp and sharp but looks less amateurish to me. Unfortunately to get that effect I was very hard on the brushes, bending the bristles at the ferrule in a way you would never do a loved paintbrush.

4) Matting

     Paint does lighten-up by 20-25% after firing. The lighter matting paint I put down disappears in strong light. I took some pictures in my window, but direct light on a clear sunny day made the shading disappear totally. A cloudy day should show it as I intended, being similar to my lightbox. A darker mat (though not as dark as my first practice!) may have been better.

Grozing iron fun

Kendrick (THL Kendrick Cameron) made me two awesome grozing irons for my glass work. One is going to Lady Moll and I'm keeping the other, and hopefully we will demonstrate them during our glass cutting class at Pennsic.

I have previously written of the grozing iron I made, poorly, for A&S work. To compare, this one is MUCH easier, almost effortless to use. My "dremel" iron was much narrower and took more wrist force to chew into the glass. This is proper stock with a wider gripping face and more weight. I also noticed this generates a fair cloud of glass dust! Use under proper ventilation, outdoors, and/or wearing an appropriately-rated respirator!!

A quick video of me using my grozing iron:

Homebrew Lightbox

I've been asked a few times about building lightboxes. For ease of reference I'm putting my directions here. They tend to be pricey, in my experience, but I built mine cheaply in a college dorm and have never felt the need to upgrade (the want, yes, the need? No.)

It's not pretty but it IS strong enough for me to lean on the surface while I work and portable enough for me to haul to events and classes!

Two 1"x6"x4' "standard" boards - 3.49 each.
3-4 "24"x30" Clear Glass Sheet" -
1 2" aluminum corner bracket (Optional - I use it for aligning/holding the surface)
1 Sheet of plexiglass (lexan, etc).
1+ fluorescent "kitchen light" at Walmart (I use two 12" and 1 18", models that chain off one another)
1 white garbage bag
Mirror shards/aluminum foil (Optional)

Cut, or have your lumber yard cut, the two boards in half so you have 4 boards of 2' length. Assemble them into a box (I chose a "pinwheel" format where the end of one board butts the side of another). Once sturdy, if desired attach the corner bracket to one corner for aligning the surface. Place aluminum foil or mirror pieces along the bottom to reflect light, if desired. Place the light(s) inside the box and run the cord under the edge to your wall outlet. Place one glass sheet on the top. Cover with a garbage bag (can be folded in half or cut open depending on how bright you need). Place the rest of the glass on top, then the plexiglass sheet. The glass provides strength and the plexiglass protection (for all those times your glasscutter goes right off the edge of the piece you are working). Turn on the lights and you are ready to go!

Because of the location of my outlets beneath and behind my work benches, I bought a remote controlled power strip (~$15 I think) at Menards. This lets me turn on my lightbox (and by extension my grinder and soldering iron) without climbing around on the floor beneath my work benches. You know, where all the glass dust and shards fall. I strongly recommend them!

[Permission to reprint is granted to any/all SCA publications, physical or digital, with minor editing as long as attribution is given and a copy sent to me! For Facebook, etc, please link here rather than reposting.]

The Putty Party

A few years ago I learned a great shortcut. But first, dramatic tension!

I've wanted to try and make thumb wax for a long time. There is a recipe in Elskus and another in Isenberg ("How to Work in Stained Glass", third edition, my modern glass bible). Thumb wax is used to hold glass pieces onto a glass easel or lightbox for test viewing or while painting.

Elskus' recipe is simple: a quarter pound of beeswax and a teaspoon of venice turpentine. The one given in Isenberg is considerably more complicated, calling for a significant amount of beesewax, a pound of cornstrach, "sweet oil" (olive oil), venice turpentine, and resin. The recipe given, below, must make enough for Tiffany's studio at it's most productive. I cut everything into a 1/6 proportion and still ended up with a lot of thumb wax.

Thumb wax (from Anita/Seymour Isenberg's How to Work in Stained Glass, 3rd edition, P. 188)
1 pound beeswax
1 pound cornstarch
4 ounces resin
7 ounces venice turpentine
1-3/4 ounce sweet oil (olive oil).

Melt the beeswax in double boiler, add the cornstarch one spoonful at a time. Then add resin, venice turps, and oil. Mix thoroughly.

Note that the above is the original recipe, not my reduced portions!

I asked my chef mother about setting up a double boiler. She suggested a good plastic bowl. Being a professional she has high grade bowls. I settled for gladware....

Hey, it doesn't melt...

I made Elskus' recipe first, beeswax and rosin. It's nice and simple to be sure.

The molten thumb wax, in it's cooling bowl

It took a small laboratories worth of scales and calculators to get some of those numbers converted and reduced. Here are the ingredients I used for the Isenbergs' recipe:

The mix being cooked

The two waxes finished, Isenberg on the left (the cornstarch makes it much lighter)

The waxes smell amazing. Beeswax gives off a honey scent when warmed. Venice turpentine is drawn from pine trees, and that is another favorite smell of mine. I also used pine resin. 

If you've never worked with venice turps, it's very messy. It gets on your hands and it wears off within an hour or two. Washing it off was impossible, though I probably don't have the right solvents.

The waxes, after being poured, are very solid. You rip out a chunk and start kneading it with your fingers and it becomes pliable. Unfortunately it leaves a definite coating of turps on your fingers as you use it. Elskus' recipe is much harder and takes more to make it pliable. Once it is warmed up, both seem to react similarly. I immediately had a suspicion that the wax would leave behind residue on the glass, if it's leaving it behind on my fingers. This is probably fine for glass you are going to fire (the wax will run or burn off) and should be fine for leaded glass, but I think this will be completely unacceptable for copper foil:

 Click the pictures to enlarge them. You will see on each piece or pieces a distinct residue of thumb wax.

This leads to my personal favorite thumb wax, something that seemed obvious to me when, in a pinch, I needed something to hold glass to my lightbox.

SILLY PUTTY

Ever since I was little I've loved Silly Putty. My parents have made it a point to give me an egg or two of it every Christmas as a gag gift.

I grabbed a handy egg one January when I needed to hold glass to my lightbox while I aggressively blended some matt paint. It worked wonderfully. No residue, easy to clean up, it's sat on top of one bottle or another in my studio for years.

I needed to trace a few bevels to make an accurate pattern of the gaps between. I turned to my silly putty to hold everything together.

There are two other alternatives that need to be discussed: Non-thumb wax (usually beeswax, kept in a crockpot-type thing and applied with an eyedropper). I didn't test it because I don't have room on my benches for a small potpourri pot to keep the wax hot and don't want to deal with clean up. I suspect it would be much more easily cleaned up but I question whether the wax would leave the glass clean. Beeswax is used to... well, wax a lot of things and it applies itself avidly.

I once tried plain candle wax. I don't recommend it. While melting a candle has a lot of benefits for ambiance and seems like it would be a good source, I found it very difficult to clean up; after scraping a lot of it off I had to soak the bevels in hot water and wipe them clean with a rag.

So, for my time and money, silly putty is where it's at. It's not going to hold pieces to a vertical easel, if that's how you choose to paint, but if you work on a lightbox like I do it's a great choice.

A&S Faire Project, post 4... and porphyry!

Finished cutting the glass for my panel, got the key lines painted on as well. The first half is firing right now. Unfortunately looking at the picture I see a problem and I'll have to redo one of the pieces heh.

Showing some of the blue pieces in place

Key lines painted in

I decided to try and freehand paint it all, which is weird for me. I ALWAYS trace. It was fun.

Today I got two books in and a new sample of porphyry. Fortunately this looks like "the right stuff!"

The original pieces I bought look like they were intended for countertops or something:

The surface was completely smooth and didn't grind very well.

The new stuff is more like the color of "Imperial porphyry" and it arrived in rough chunks that do grind quite well. 

Finally....carving molds is difficult!

2014 A&S Faire Project: Day 1

Now that I think I have all of my materials and tools gathered, it's time to get to work!

I will try to add notations and sources later. From my research, the glass artist worked from a "table" that was whitewashed, and the pattern drawn directly on it. There are financial records showing the glazier hiring artists to draw their pattern onto the table for them. I do have a sister-in-law who is a professional artist, but rather than bother her, I decided to trace the design I want onto the board. But, I wanted to do it in a period manner too.

The "creative" category of our faire criteria threw me for a while. Researching period practices, we can show that glaziers would reuse the same cutlines on a table for different windows. I have chosen a specific cutline from a grisaille window segment in a Norman catehdral. I'm going to paint it with a floral motif from a different contemporaneous grisaille in the same cathedral, and use a border inspired by a third. The end design should look like it could have come from the same time and place (and building!)

I started with a large board I had around the house. I white washed it and placed it on my dining table to begin working. It was inspected and improved by Scheherazade ("Zod"), my cat.

I placed my pattern onto the board, grabbed a pin from my sewing kit... and started poking it. Now, this method is not one I researched personally (my library is not focused on scribal arts) but was described to me by multiple highly-learned scribe friends. [See Lessons Learned, below, for a note on these pins!]

This was both more and less tedious than I expected. Right when I reached a point where I really thought unkind things, I also realized I was finished with the pin. It hurt my hand quite a bit, pushing that pin into wood. The thought occurred to me it might be easier to have a handmade pin like what Roana or Ercc makes. They are a bit larger and I suspect stronger. Sometimes this pin was bending more than I was comfortable with as I pushed. I imagined it snapping and going into my finger (been there, done that). Fortunately, it didn't.

The hole-y template

I then rubbed the leadlines-to-be with charcoal

As promised, the dots and charcoal were left behind on the board.

I then played connect-the dots...

The traced cutline looked a bit irregular. On further exam... the original panel was irregular. No problem there, then!

Now, I have a whitewashed board, a cutline on it, and my tools ready. I got excited, grabbed the glass, and got to work. Unfortunately, that was a mistake. The medieval procedure was to trace my desired cut line "with an emery point" before taking the dividing iron to it. I forgot that part and jumped right in with the iron. As a result, it didn't follow the path I needed. Rather than just waste the opportunity however, I grabbed my camera. Here is video I took of the dividing iron doing it's job. I did initially have to use a little bit of water to get it started, but after that it followed the heat well:

I removed the background nose of the "How It's Made" marathon and replaced it with something a little more.... on topic.

Before anyone asks, the white material on the rod is from absent-mindedly setting a blackhot iron onto the pattern table. It burned and picked up some paint.

Since I demonstrated the dividing iron on tape, I decided to do a quick video of the grozing iron too. I had a segment of glass that I scored but which was not cleanly broken. The grozing iron takes it right off.

[Edit: Movie deleted! I was an idiot! See the post that follows on Day 2, I kind of misunderstood how a grozing iron was supposed to work until I used it in production...]

I didn't have any clever music for this one, so you get 23 seconds of How It's Made.

Lessons Learned:

The wood used for the table can have an impact. This had hard bands that were difficult to push a pin into. Estelle de la Mer has informed me of a better alternative and provided a picture, of a handmade tool she uses for ruling in her scribal work:

Don't forget the emery point path! I shall find out today how different that makes the process.

As I already knew, a larger dividing iron will hold more heat and make this process easier with it's extended working time. That will be rectified later!

Making a hogs-bristle brush

I had some trouble when I tried making my first minever paint brush.

I researched it a bit more and discovered two things: The first set of quills I had purchased were mutants and had been cut short by the vendor and second, people working with quills usually soak them to make them softer.

Now, to be clear, in the directions on p. 40 of my copy of Cennini he doesn't say to soak the quills. His thread may have been stronger, his quills thinner-walled, or many other things. However it looks like fly-fishers and others using these quills today frequently soak them, so I gave that a try. That made the quills softer and suddenly able to take a bit of a "squeeze" that broke my thread with the first try. Not wanting to waste my precious supplies of stoat tails, I decided to try again using hogs-bristle (the other type of brush described by Cennini).

A feather from the first set (top) next to one from the second set. I hadn't realized the feather should have this chiseled tip the top one has. Comparatively the second set also have much more usable quill.

The process is pretty much exactly as described in the previous post. I have a pack of hog-bristle brushes that I bought for scrubs in my glass painting. I took an exceptionally large one for which I had a duplicate and took it apart to claim the bristles.

An interesting observation, the bristles have a "root" end. I'm not sure it's biolgically/cosmetically a "root" but one end will be thicker and stronger on a good bristle (I also don't know why these are bristles and not hairs, but I'm a glazier-turned-brushmaker not a biologist... yet). I found it important to try and line up the bristles so I knew which end was the thicker/stronger end.

I took my soaked quill and trimmed the very end off. I used a tapered stick "of other good wood" as Cennini calls for, and shoved the quill on as far as possible. I then grabbed a clump of bristles and shoved them in the other end. Cennini described sticking bristles/hairs in individually until you can't get any more of them. This is where it became a LOT easier to know which was the strong end, as that end wiggles in more easily.

This also makes some sense for retention purposes, I think. The portion of the bristles that is at the opening of the quill is somewhat thinner. You can sneak more bristles in. If you were to try and pull the bristles collectively, however, I think the thicker ends would jam and not come out in a clump.

I tied a knot with my waxed silk thread and could see the quill took the pressure a little better. My thread snapped, after I had gotten the knot tied. On a lark, taking a note from an old martial arts movie that "wet silk never breaks" (not true!) I soaked the thread. I continued tying another knot and doing a little wrapping (that was probably too loose). Its difficult to do all this with only two hands! Same thread, knot, wrapping on the other end to secure it to the stick.

The brush was a little wild, and as Cennini told me to, I trimmed it down a bit:

As a final step I dunked it back into water and made some practice strokes. I gently tried pulling the bristles and none came out. I wouldn't give them a serious tug, but I think this is a practical brush made exactly to the primary source's standards. We will see if it holds up to vitreous paint and silver stain, however!

When I teach my silver stain glass this Pennsic, I hope to give out small vials of stain. I'd love to make a dozen of these to give out too. It didn't take too long in the scheme of things and would be a nice touch!

Lessons Learned:

Hog bristles are much more clingy than stoat fur. When I dunked my bunches of bristles in water they immediately made a tight cluster. I had to work the fur with my fingers for a while to try and make a cohesive bundle. I think in general bristle brushes are going to be easier to make than stoat.

I'm not sure why soaking a hard protein-based quill makes it softer, but don't our fingernails do the same after a hot soak in the tub? Might be something to investigate when bored later.

I have typed and said Cennini's name so much lately I'm starting to feel bad that I have no idea how to pronounce it. Keh-nee-nee? Cheh-nee-nee? I highly doubt it's Sen-nee-nee. I'll need to figure that out before I teach and have to say it several times.