The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Coloring Finishing And Painting Wood
The story is mixed with mythology which tells us that the shining hair covered with jewels was wafted from the altar to heaven and formed a constellation in the Milky Way which we still know as Coma Berenices, or Berenice's Hair.
The Greeks, who were a seafaring race, had imported a beautiful resin which we now call amber, probably from France or Denmark or from the shores of some other distant northern sea. This attractive material was like the color of Berenice's hair, and it was then given the name of Berenice.
For many centuries after the time of the famous Queen of Cyrene, the Greeks and Romans prized and valued amber, which was the resin that was used in making varnish, and continued to call it Berenice. The word was also written in Greek in a slightly different form —Pheronice—and sometimes pronounced with a sound like our V for the Ph. In Latin the word was at first written in the form, Verenice, and later changed to Vernix, which is said to be the root word of the word varnish in the English language.
The inventor of liquid varnish is unknown. Its use, however, reaches far back into antiquity. From time to time samples of very old varnish have been discovered; for example, when some of the tombs of Egypt were opened, mummy-cases, evidently 2500 or more years old, were found, finished with a pale yellow varnish that was scarcely checked by age and the elements.
Altho the coats of varnish on the mummy-cases and other wooden articles have lasted well, the finishing-materials were very poorly applied, indicating that there were no brushes at that period of the world's history. The workmen evidently spread or smeared the liquid varnish over the surface with some tool having a flat surface—possibly a spatula or trowel. It is known that spatulas were used in later centuries for spreading thick varnish, and it is probable that this same method was used for many centuries.
The composition of these old varnishes is absolutely unknown. They are thought to have been compounds of some of the resins then known in North Africa and an oil, probably oil of cedar, which is quite similar to our turpentine. A. H. Sabin, a very careful student of the history of varnish, thinks that the mummy-case varnishes may have been made from some African resin which was then known to the Egyptians, together with linseed-oil.1 It is known that very ancient peoples had flax, and that they knew how to prepare some of the vegetable oils, particularly olive-oil. It is, therefore, quite possible that the Egyptian varnishes may have been drying-oil varnishes rather than volatile-oil varnishes which were made from an evaporating oil, such as oil of cedar.
Varnishes have evidently been used thruout all the ages —from practically prehistoric times in Egypt down to the present day. Mention of varnish is made in the manuscripts of many of the world's great writers.
