WAX ART.
Flowers
and Fruit
WITH INSTRUCTIONS FOR
MAKING THE WAX AND MOLDS, MATERIALS USED, ETC.
Wax Art was supposed to have reached the height of perfection many years ago, but since the invention of the various machines for cutting and molding designs into form from wax, the rapidity with which the work is executed, and the endless variety of artistic productions in wax art, it is evident perfection has not yet been reached, and we are led to believe it susceptible of attaining a still higher degree of excellence. The reason of its being taught so little during the past few years is owing principally to the fact of its simplicity since the use of molds and cutters, so artistically arranged that the form of any desired leaf or flower may be chiseled out at will, from the varieties of colored wax before you.
Nothing in fancy work excels the art of making Wax Flowers for interest, amusement and fascination. Only a few tools are required. A good eye for colors and a little taste in arranging them. There are two distinct methods. First,
By Molding Them. All tubular flowers must be made by molds, viz: Calla lily, lily of the valley, iris, morning glory, scarlet cypress vine, stephanotis, and all other flowers tubular or labiated. A good set of wooden molds, carved carefully, is the best, but any lady can prepare her own molds in the following manner. Get your flower fresh as possible, and stand it in water to give it perfect strength. Fix a little pasteboard box, or any small cup shaped box; prepare these yourself with strips of pasteboard, some larger or smaller, just according to the size of leaf or flower you intend to mold from; mix the finest dentists’ plaster of paris, (practice alone can perfect one in the proper consistency), and pour it into the flower, having enough mixed to fill it and cover every little part of the flower, let it remain until hard, tear off the flower, and you have a perfect mold, every little vein and impression perfectly taken. With a sharp knife trim off all ragged edges and superabundant plaster, leaving your mold small as possible, and lighter to handle. These leaf molds are much better for all uses, even for sheeted wax flowers, than those metal molds that cut the wax, and never give the fibrous look needed for a natural looking leaf. The lily of the valley needs a wooden mold, the flower is so delicate a plaster mold cannot be made.
Preparation of the Wax for Molded Flowers. These recipes are of the times of our great grandmothers, who kept a few bees in their gardens, making honey from the fields of sweet clover, the apple and other fruit blossoms in the spring of the year, and buckwheat patches in the summer. The wax was brown, and they bleached it by melting it, clarifying it by selecting the whitest, running it off in thin sheets, and laying it in the hot sun to bleach. All bleacheries do this on a larger or smaller scale. After bleaching the wax white as muslin, you can make your parlor mantel ornaments of it.
Keep a set of tin cups for your different tints of wax, your white cup being the largest.