Important: Safety Warning
This page describes trade processes that use dangerously toxic materials such as cyanide solutions, mercury amalgams, or strong acids. These processes require training, equipment, and precautions far beyond what the text describes.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Purple Enamels
I. Flux colored with oxide of gold, purple precipitate of cassius (see Nos. 2720 to 2723), or peroxide of manganese.
II. Sulphur, nitre, vitriol, antimony, and oxide of tin, of each 1 pound; red lead, 60 pounds; mix and fuse, cool and powder; add rose copper, 19 ounces; zaffre, 1 ounce; crocus martis, 1½ ounces; borax, 3 ounces; and 1 pound of a compound formed of gold, silver, and mercury; fuse, stirring the melted mass with a copper rod all the time, then place it in crucibles, and submit them to the action of a reverberatory furnace for 24 hours. This is said to be the purple enamel used in the mosaic pictures of St. Peter's at Rome.