"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." This is week forty-five of the Pancakes & French Fries William Morris Project, happening every thursday in 2012.
To recap for those of you who just dropped in on my painting restoration posts and wonder, "what are all these boring and almost identical photos of a dirty old picture all about anyway, and what does it have to do with the William Morris Project?", I am documenting the slow restoration of a nearly 100 year old oil painting, frame and all. {you could also read this.}
On each corner of the frame, there are funny little metal ornaments. As I was cleaning, I realized the metal piece in the upper right corner had been re-tacked on with carpet nails, {not original} and it kind of fell off the frame with barely any pressure at all. It was at that point that I realized the metal was extremely soft, and was most likely some sort of lead product. I should be ordering one of these, pronto. I do not have the fear of lead in my heart, so I handled that little ornament without gloves {gasp!}, a respirator, or a hazmat suit. I just didn't lick it or bite it. Afterwards I washed my hands thoroughly. This may seem like a bad idea to, well, the rest of the world, so I will warn you: Don't try these things at home, in your garage, late at night, after the kids are in bed. Seek professional help. Always follow OSHA standards. Wear a NIOSH-Approved Particulate Filtering Facepiece Respirator at all times.
Whatever. I stuck that sucker in some Methylene Chloride and watched an episode of Once Upon A Time while the paint stripped. Then, I scrubbed the goop off with a toothbrush {not mine}, and rinsed it clean with hot water. Look how pretty it is! All the little details were hidden under globs of faux gilt. These corner ornaments were clearly hand made, and I love them. After tagging and marking the corresponding corner on the frame, I started in on number two.
On to the next thing... The damar resin I ordered arrived in the mail this week, so I was finally ready to make my lining compound, which is exactly the same as encaustic medium, by the way, so it was easy to find out how to make it myself, and save about $60. I borrowed a crock-pot from the founder of Dick's Mustache Wax, and got to work. First things first, I tested the temperature of the crock pot with only water in it, just to make sure that I wouldn't ignite a beeswax bomb and subsequently burn the house down. After the crock pot was cleared for use, I melted down the resin, which took about three hours, and it was still quite thick and sticky.
Since patience is not my strongest suit, I just stuck a big chunk of
beeswax in the pot anyway. You can see that I half heartedly tried to
break the larger piece into smaller chunks, but gave up.
After about three more hours, the mixture was still sticky at the bottom, like honey. Since I have read just about every blog post and article online about making encaustic medium, I knew that it had to be clear and runny all the way through, to properly mix the two ingredients together. At this point it was 11pm. I went to bed, with my hot crock pot full of flammable materials ON in the garage. A few times during the night I woke up thinking, "I should go make sure that the temperature is low enough....zzzzzz".
Again, refer to my warnings above.
Nothing happened. This morning the pot was full of lovely smelling clear liquid with a very low viscosity. I was satisfied. Part of me wanted to just jump in and line the painting right away, but I think I will do a few more preparatory things first, so that I don't destroy several weeks worth of work. {building my patience, delayed gratification....etc.}
You aren't supposed to use kitchen items for food after they have been used for encaustic/lining compounds, but I figured a layer of foil was a good enough barrier. It's just wax and tree sap for crying out loud, not chemical death.
Pouring it into a jelly roll pan will make for a nice thin sheet that I can break up into small, usable chunks later when I am ready to line the canvas.
Who knew this would be so much fun, while being so dangerous!
Making Sea Salt Caramel, Alice
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