British Manufacturing Industries: Pottery, Glass and Silicates, Furniture and Woodwork.Arnoux, Léon
History
British Manufacturing Industries: Pottery, Glass and Silicates, Furniture and Woodwork.
Arnoux, Léon
Manufacturing industries -- Great Britain
called smalt. Oxide of silver stains glass from a delicate lemon tint
to a deep orange, in proportion to the quantity of the oxide employed.
With the exception of the last-named colouring material, the above
mentioned are mixed together with the substances which form the glass,
and are melted in the usual way in glass-pots, except that they are
treated with considerably more care, in order that their tints may be
true. Oxide of silver, however, is never mixed with the materials of
which the glass is made, but is applied to the surface in the
following manner: a solution of nitrate of silver mixed with some
substance, such, for instance, as chalk, may be painted upon the parts
of the glass which it is desired to stain, and these are heated to a
dull red heat, in what is called a "muffle." Wherever the oxide of
silver, which is reduced from the nitrate by heat, comes in contact
with the glass, the latter is stained more or less intensely,
according to the quantity of silver present. Pure metallic silver may
be melted with metallic antimony, and the mass ground to a fine powder
in water. This powder, after being mixed with some Venetian red and
gum water, is applied to the surface of the glass, which is, when dry,
heated to a dull red heat in a muffle, producing the yellow stain,
which can be seen after the Venetian red and the excess of silver have
been scraped off. The reason why silver, or oxide of silver, is not
mixed with the glass materials and fused with them, is because it does
not readily unite with oxygen, and, when it has done so, it loses its
oxygen again at a high temperature, and becomes reduced to the
metallic state; and inasmuch as metals have no effect whatever in
staining silicates, glass made in this way would not have the yellow
colour which it has, when the silver is heated upon its surface to a
much lower temperature in a muffle; for the temperature to which the
constituents of the glass must be heated, so as to cause them to burn
it in, would be so high, that the oxide of silver first formed at a
lower temperature would be reduced to the reguline or metallic state.
Gold also, like silver, does not unite with oxygen readily, or remain
in union with it at high temperature; therefore great care is required
in the preparation of glass to be coloured by oxide of gold; the form
in which it is used being generally that of the purple of Cassius,
made by precipitating a salt of tin with a salt of gold. This
substance is mixed with the glass to be coloured, and heated in a
suitable glass-pot. Portions of it are gathered and allowed to cool,
these being generally of a yellowish, brownish, and sometimes reddish
tint, though they have not in any case the same beautiful red colour
which they produce when applied, as will be immediately described, to
the surface of white glass. A certain quantity of white glass is
gathered from the glass-pot in the soft state with one of these pieces
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