Among the records of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, are some letters of 1563, sealed with red and black wax. In the family of the Rhingrave, Philip Francis von Daun, the oldest letter sealed with wax, known in Germany, is found, of the date of August 3, 1554; it was written from London, by an agent of that family, of the name of Gerrard Herman. The colour of the wax is dark red, and very shining.
The oldest recipe known in Germany for making sealing-wax, was found by M. Von Murr, in a work by Samuel Zimmerman, citizen of Augsburg, published in 1759. The copy in the library of the university of Gottingen is signed by the author himself.—“To make hard sealing-wax, called Spanish wax, with which, if letters be sealed, they cannot be opened without breaking the seal; take beautiful clear resin, the whitest you can procure, and melt it over a slow coal fire. When it is properly melted, take it from the fire, and for every pound of resin, add two ounces of cinnabar, pounded very fine, stirring it about. Then let the whole cool, or pour it into cold water. Thus you will have beautiful red sealing-wax.
“If you are desirous of having black wax, add lamp-black to it. With smalt or azure, you may make blue: with white-lead, white; and with orpiment, yellow.
“If, instead of resin, you melt purified turpentine in a glass vessel, and give it any colour you choose, you will have a harder kind of sealing-wax, and not so brittle as the former.”
It may be remarked, that in these recipes for the fabrication of sealing-wax there is no mention of gum-lac, which is known at present as a chief ingredient in the composition of this article.
Zimmerman’s sealing-wax approaches very near to the quality of that known as maltha, whence we may conclude, that the manufacture of it did not originally come from the East Indies. The most ancient mention of sealing-wax occurs in a botanical work, treating of the history of aromatics and simples, by Garcia ab Horto, published at Antwerp in 1563, where the author, speaking of gum-lac says, that those sticks used for sealing letters are made of it; at which time sealing-wax was common among the Portuguese, and has since been manufactured chiefly in Holland.
M. Spiess, principal keeper of the Records at Plessenberg, says, respecting the antiquity of Wafers, in Germany, that the most ancient use of them he has known, occurs in a letter written by D. Krapf, at Spires, in 1624, to the government of Bayreuth.—The same authority informs us that some years after, the Brandenburg factor at Nuremberg sent such wafers to a bailiff, at Osternohe. During the whole of the seventeenth century, wafers were not used in the Chancery at Brandenburg, and only by private persons there.
Seals, it appears, from certain passages of Egyptian history, parallel with, and perhaps anterior to the Israelitish ingress, were formed or cut in emeralds, the native produce of that country. Other precious stones, metals, steel, lead, and a variety of materials, but chiefly of a hard and precious kind, have been always employed for that purpose.