In addition to the Milk Paint appendix in the “The Anarchist’s Design Book” there are a few more resources that the new milk painter might find useful:
Chapter 25 on Finishing in “Chairmaker’s Notebook” by Peter Galbert, available from Lost Art Press.
Peter’s blog Chair Notes has tons of information including this article on using milk paint, “Bullet Proof Finish.”
Chris recently completed a DVD for a bookcase where he covers the use of milk paint. The DVD (or dowload) is available from Popular Woodworking.
For the adventurous painter and finisher:
Brian Anderson, our compatriot in France, experimented with a milk paint recipe and reported his results in “The Mad Chef’s Milk Paint Gets A Shellacking” post here.
A big thank you to Richard Byrne and Ryan Mooney for providing a wealth of links to painting and finishing resources in yesterday’s post, “Milk Paint – A Short History.”
In “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” one appendix is devoted to milk paint. As Chris notes there are plenty of milk paint recipes from the 1800s and provides a reference from 1836, “The Painter’s, Guilder’s and Varnisher’s Manuel…” by Henry Carey Baird. I thought 1836 was rather a late date. And I wondered if there was a recipe that was accepted as a standard and when the recipe came into use in America.
In 1774, an updated edition of “L’Art du Peinture, Doreur, Vernisseur” by Watin was published. This book took an orderly approach to the painting arts compared to the many ragtag publications that covered trade secrets that ranged from royal cake recipes to how to do your laundry.
About 20 years later, Antoine-Alexis Cadet de Vaux, a French chemist (and friend to Ben Franklin), was experimenting with the distemper recipes in Watin’s book. He published his findings in “Feuille de Cultivateur” around 1793. This was followed by “Memoire sur la peinture au lait” published in 1800 or 1801 (depending on which month it was in the French Republic Calendar at the time of publication). Cadet de Vaux noted that his previous recipe was published at a time of public misfortune (the Revolution) and a time of shortages. Although distemper paint was inexpensive the cost and shortages of linseed oil led him to use milk instead.
In “Memoire,” Cadet de Vaux describes the advantages of milk paint compared to distemper: milk paint was cheaper, the recipe was not heated, it dried fast, did not smell of size or oil and when rubbed with a coarse cloth the paint did not come off. The recipe consisted of skimmed milk, fresh slaked lime, oil of caraway, linseed or nut oil and Spanish white. He explains that the “skimmed milk has lost its butyraceous part, but retains its cheesy part.” The cheesy part acts as a kind of glue and gives the mixture an elasticity.
Cadet de Vaux also provides a milk paint recipe for exterior work. In 1801, “Memoire” was translated and published in London in “The Repertory of Arts and Manufacters,” and you can read the recipe and the butyraceous remark here.
Cadet de Vaux’s recipe was repeated in “The Painter’s and Varnisher’s Guide…” by P. F. Tingry (a Swiss chemist) in 1804. Many more editions of painting and varnishing manuals with various titles and translations followed. Cadet de Vaux’s recipe appears to be the standard.
Somewhere around 1803-1808, milk paint recipes appeared in articles and almanacs in New York and New England and for the most part were from the English translation of Cadet de Vaux’s “Memoire.”
Now I get to write my favorite command in Franglish, “Fetchez la vache!”
We’ve just been notified by the printing plant that “The Anarchist’s Design Book” will ship from the plant on March 4 – more than 10 days later than originally expected.
As a result, if you are coming to Covington on March 11-12 for the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event and our book-release party, it’s unlikely you will receive your copy in the mail before those events.
So if you would prefer to pick up your book in Covington – either at the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event or at our book-release party – here is what you need to do:
Before March 1, send an email to help@lostartpress.com with the subject line “ADB pickup.” In the email, please include your full name, the email you used to order the book and your order number (if you have it). We need this information to look up your order.
Once you send us that email, we’ll put you on a list and have a book waiting for you in Covington. Then just talk to me or John at the hand tool event or the book-release party. We’ll get you your book, plus a few stickers, and personally sign it.
Sorry for the hassle. This was out of our control.
The 12 handmade plates of the furniture pieces in “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” are – hands down – my favorite part of the entire project. Though they occupy 12 pages of the 456 pages between the book’s hardcovers, the plates took as long to produce as the words.
To give you a look at the process, I asked my cousin Jessamyn West to produce a short film on the work of copperplate artist Briony Morrow-Cribbs, who made the plates. Jessamyn brought along my aunt Liz West and James Poolner to help with the filming and photography.
The five-minute film takes you through the mechanical process of making a plate and starts after the illustration has been completed, which itself is a detailed and laborious task.
I hope you enjoy this brief look at an interesting hand process.
If you’d like to meet Briony and get a good look at her plates, stop by the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event on March 12 at Braxton Brewing Co. She’ll be there signing books in the late afternoon for a bit, and she will be at the book-release party at our storefront later that evening.
One last thing: If you want “The Anarchist’s Design Book” with a free pdf download, you have until Monday, Feb. 15, to order. After that day, the price for the bundle of the book plus the pdf will go up.
Woodworker/teacher/bench builder/beekeeper Will Myers recently sent me some photos of two vernacular stick chairs he spotted during a trip to Tryon Palace in New Bern, NC.
Both chairs are English and Will reports they were brought to Tryon Palace in late 1940s when the palace was re-furnished.
The three-legged brown one has some interesting details. The legs look like they were originally faceted and then perhaps worn down, sanded down or somethinged-down to create of a roundish profile. I’ve been sketching some chairs where the arms are captured by the back spindles. It’s somewhat of an awkward look to my eye, and I haven’t yet produced a sketch that I want to build.
I quite like the green chair, though the seat looks a little thin to my eye. The armbow reminds me of several Danish Modern chairs that I like. I plan to steal this armbow design for a future chair. It makes the chair look very inviting.