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Onyx, Nicolo

Onyx, Nicolo Page of 453 Opalus, Opal Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
ONYX.
269
women for paint (pearl-powder ?), grind them fine ; then steep the powder in lemon-juice, frequently passed through a filter, so that the juice be three or four fingers deep over it. Let the mixture stand thus, well covered over, for ten days in a warm place ; then pour off the juice ; wash the residuum in water ; grind it up in a porphyry mortar with white of egg well beaten up beforehand ; then cast the cement in moulds of the required design, made in wax. Next polish with great nicety the rough back of these casts, so that they may be applied skilfully and neatly upon a black ground, that the deception may not be readily detected. In rubbing down the shells, other colours can be added in fine powder, so that the Sardonyx may be imitated in this way as well as the other precious stones."
Georgius Agricola (d. 1485) has a passage interesting as show­ing how rapidly the newly-revived art of gem-engraving had found its way into Germany :—" Nowadays, in the opaque white crust of the German Onyx (Agathe-onyx), engravers cut the coats-of-arms, the pride of noblemen, because this stone has veins more translucent than any other of the same kind, and moreover is harder than rock-crystal. They also paint the hack of these coats-of-arms with the proper tinctures required by the armorial bearings."
The Onyx, strange to say, considering its high repute in an­cient times, bore a most unfavourable character in the Middle Ages, Marbodus asserting that its wearer was exposed to the assaults of demons and of ugly visions by night, besides being plagued with quarrels and lawsuits by day. The sole remedy was to wear a Sard as well, which would completely neutralise the mischievous influence of the Onyx.
Onyx, Nicolo Page of 453 Opalus, Opal
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