SC - Manual de Mujeres, #56,61,68-72

[Dana Huffman]

  I agree with you on the durability and permanent of egg tempera.  I also 
agree about the commercial tempera colors, not coming up to the brilliance 
of the surviving examples.  However, I do recommend them for the person who 
only wishes to explore the medium.  Getting into to pure pigments such as 
were used in the early Renaissance, can be both frustrating and expensive.  
The best pigments were usually ground rare earths and ground semi-precious 
stones.
  I have run across references to the use of olive oil mixed with egg yolk 
as a carrier medium for gold in line work.

  Lady Katherine McGuire


>From: "RANDALL DIAMOND" <ringofkings at mindspring.com>
>Reply-To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
>To: "SCA COOKS-LIST" <SCA-Cooks at ansteorra.org>
>Subject: SC - Re: Egg Tempera OT
>Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 22:34:25 -0500
>
>
>Maredudd  asks:
> >>>>Media in period could be gum Arabic (or some
>other vegetable gum) or egg yolk - however I worry
>about egg yolk. What happens if that scroll gets
>rained on? Not only would you smear the paints,
>but the possibility for spoilage seems high. Besides,
>I can't *stand* the smell of egg yolk, and I'm
>not sure I could work with it on that basis.<<<<
>
>Egg yolk is THE primary media for tempera throughout
>the Middle Ages.  In the Renaissance, when the artists
>were switching from wood panel to canvas, they also were
>experimenting with many kinds of oils.  By the end of the
>SCA period, oil mediums had almost completely replaced
>tempera in use.  Don't worry about rain smearing egg yolk
>media tempera, the stuff polemerizes rather quickly in
>drying and becomes insoluable in water.  Have you
>ever had to to use steel wool scrubbers to get dried egg
>yolk off a mixing bowl.  Same principle.   If you are worried
>about spoilage (on the illumination I presume), don't.  It
>is fundamentally changed to a very inert polymer and will not
>spoil at all.
>
> >>>>However, in the interest of gaining a bit more
>knowledge, does anyone have experience with egg
>tempera? What's the "shelf-life" of egg tempera -
>do you want to refrigerate it? How does it perform
>over the long-term life of a scroll? If you live in a
>humid climate, does it go all fuzzy after a hot,
>wet summer under glass?<<<<
>
>You don't mix up big batches of egg tempera when
>painting; you mix your tempera powders with fresh,
>room temperature yolk as you are painting, thinning with
>clean water to the desired transparency levels.  The
>beauty of properly applied egg yolk tempera is that
>you can sketch out line forms and apply multiple layers
>of transparent to semi-transparent colour over it without
>redissolving the underlayers (assuming you let them dry
>properly between applications).  What most folks think of
>tempera is the rather flat and dull grade school stuff
>(pre acrylics).  Period tempera is almost radiant in its
>colour subtlety.  You do not need to refrigerate as it is
>best to work fresh every day.  Period temperas are
>just as wonderfuly fresh and bright as they were when
>painted.  The substances in yolk make one our most
>durable art media.  Oils by comparison, do not hold up
>anywhere near so well.   If you don't apply the tempera
>to thickly, caking it on, it should hold up on scrolls quite
>well.  The yolk is also a good bonding agent to the
>parchment.  If it was thoroughly dry, it is not going to
>get "fuzzy" under glass due to humid conditions.  You
>are more likely to have spores attack the paper itself.
>
>One of the other things to know is that the "tempera"
>powder you get at stores is not necessarily period
>in composition.  Period artists ground and compounded their
>own from various substances for different colours.
>I am not sure that all commercial (just add water type)
>powders will produce a satisfactory period appearance.
>It is a process requiring quite a bit of study to get it
>right.  You might be better off with watercolours, which
>were also used quite extensively in the late Renaissance.
>
>Incidentally, for the gold linework like halos and such, the
>slime from heating snails was used with a little egg yolk as
>a binder for powdered gold.  This was a different technique
>than application of gold leaf in an area though.
>
>Akim Yaroslavich
>"No glory comes without pain"
>
>
>============================================================================
>
>To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
>Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".
>
>============================================================================

________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com