A Manual of Mending and Repairing; With Diagrams

by Charles Godfrey Leland

The iridescent glaze, accompanied with more or less of the mother or solid substance, is found in a very great number of shells; e.g., the Peter’s Ear (Halyotis iris) of the Pacific; also in common mussels, especially the Unio, found in most clear streams or brooks in Europe and America where there is not much lime. These often yield pearls of great value.

Mother-of-pearl can be sawed without any great difficulty into plates, which are polished with fine sand and then with tripoli. Of late a great deal of small furniture inlaid with squares and triangles of this material has found its way from Turkey and Persia to London. These pieces are simply attached with cement made of sturgeon’s bladder, mastic, salmiac, or even glue. They can generally be obtained from dealers in Oriental goods. Abraham Sassoon, of Wardour Street, will supply them in any quantity.

Louis Edgar Andés and Sigmund Lehner, both experimental technologists, have given several curious recipes for imitating mother-of-pearl. From filing or grinding, the best mother-of-pearl shell becomes like a white metal, which can be combined with white of egg or pure white gelatine to a fine marble-like substance, which, however, lacks iridescence. Broken into very small pieces, which are set in a bed of glue and glycerine, and then covered, when dry, with another coating of the same, we have what its inventor, Lehner, assures us is a very good imitation of pearl-shell.

But there is scaled away from a variety of shells a coating of nacre, or coloured glaze, which when powdered still retains the pearly lustre. This may be taken even from the common American oyster or all mussels. According to Andés, who refers, I think, to this, it can be laid on any substance and covered with a gum-glaze. He also informs us that the pearl-like inner layers of oyster-shells, or of any other kind, reduced to powder and mixed with sturgeon’s bladder and spirits, painted on grey paper in several coats, present the appearance of nacre. I have seen specimens of such painting which were indeed very pretty, but the pearly iridescence was rather faint. According to the author, the pearly brilliancy is much increased by an addition of silver-bronze powder.

I conclude from this, not having in this instance experimented personally, save in carving pearl, that coarse powders of the highly coloured greenish and other nacres of tropical shells, as well as of the European mussel and some other shells, can be combined with binding-gums of a transparent nature so as to form a very admirable imitation of mother-of-pearl.

I may here remark, in connection with this, that the common American clam (Venus mercernaria) has a white shell of intense hardness, which, when polished, is as beautiful as porcelain or ivory; also that the purple spot in the American oyster-shell, from which the Indians made a very hard and beautiful bead, might easily be drilled out for buttons.

A very beautiful imitation of mother-of-pearl is made in Japan. It is not, however, iridescent. It is said to be made with rice. I conjecture that this is rice treated with diluted acid.

I have before me now a string of 400 imitation red coral beads, price twopence, such as are commonly sold everywhere. They are manufactured of vermilion powder, rice-flour, and gum, and, when they are carefully made, are extremely hard and durable, so much so that the composition may be used to mend broken articles made of red coral. Such objects in a fractured state are very common in curiosity shops, but the art of repairing them seems to be as yet unknown, though it is extremely profitable.

Of coral, Lehner tells us that celluloid in combination with different substances—e.g., white zinc or cinnabar—can be coloured from delicate rose to fiery vermilion, and forms a very close imitation of coral. A very good and much cheaper imitation can be made by preparing perfectly white paper-paste (vide Papier-Mâché), and combining it with vermilion, zinc, &c. From such artificial coral very beautiful cups, plates, and ornaments for inlaying, beads, pendants for jewellery, book-covers, &c., can easily be made. The colour can be varied to turquoise, emerald, ebony, ivory, &c., by simply changing the colouring-powders used.

There is a very cheap and common imitation of coral made by dipping vermicelli, twigs, &c., into a solution of red sealing-wax in spirits of wine. This is, however, extremely brittle. White marble-dust, or very fine white flint sand, combined with vermilion and silicate of soda, is said to produce a very admirable imitation of coral. The basis of levigated sand, or carbonate of lime, with silicate, can be varied with the dyes to imitate any gems, and is invaluable for mending pottery or stone-work.