Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664)Boyle, Robert
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Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664)
Boyle, Robert
Color -- Early works to 1800; Colors -- Early works to 1800
For, I must proceed to tell you (_Pyrophilus_) as another instance of the
Adventitious Colours of Metals, that which is something strange, Namely,
That though Copper Calcin'd _per se_ affords but a Dark and basely Colour'd
_Calx_, yet the Glassmen do with it, as themselves inform me, Tinge their
Glass green. And I remember, that when once we took some crude Copper, and
by frequent Ignition quenching it in Water had reduc'd it to a Dark and
Ill-colour'd Powder, and afterward kept it in Fusion in about a 100. times
its weight of fine Glass, we had, though not a Green, yet a Blew colour'd
Mass, which would perhaps have been Green, if we had hit right upon the
Proportion of the Materials, and the Degree of Fire, and the Time wherein
it ought to be kept in Fusion, so plentifully does that Metal abound in a
Venerial Tincture, as Artists call it, and in so many wayes does it
disclose that Richness. But though Copper do as we have said give somewhat
near the like Colour to Glass, which it does to _Aqua-fortis_, yet it seems
worth inquiry, whether those new Colours which Mineral Bodies disclose in
melted Glass, proceed from the Coalition of the Corpuscles of the Mineral
with the Particles of the Glass as such, or from the Action (excited or
actuated by fire) of the Alcalizate Salt (which is a main Ingredient of
Glass,) upon the Mineral Body, or from the concurrence of both these
Causes, or else from any other. But to return to that which we were saying,
we may observe that _Putty_ made by calcining together a proportion of Tin
and Lead, as it is it self a White _Calx_, so does it turn the _Pitta di
Crystallo_ (as the Glassmen call the matter of the Purer sort of Glass,
wherewith it is Colliquated into a White Mass, which if it be opacous
enough is employ'd, as we elsewhere declare, for White Amel. But of the
Colours which the other Metals may be made to produce in Colourless Glass,
and other Vitrifiable Bodies, that have native Colours of their own, I must
leave you to inform your self upon Tryal, or at least must forbear to do it
till another time, considering how many Annotations are to follow, upon
what has in this and the two former Experiments been said already.
_Annotation I._
When the Materials of Glass being melted with Calcin'd Tin, have compos'd a
Mass Undiaphanous and White, this White Amel is as it were the Basis of all
those fine Concretes that Goldsmiths and several Artificers imploy in the
curious Art of Enamelling. For this White and Fusible substance will
receive into it self, without spoyling them, the Colours of divers other
Mineral substances, which like it will indure the fire.
_Annotation II._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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