"Lastly, the stale Urine, or old mudd of pissing places, will colour a well scoured small piece of Silver, into a Golden colour, and it is with this (and not at all with the Bath-water) wherewith the Boys at Bath colour single pence; although the generality believe otherwise."
-William Petty, An Apparatus to the History of the Common Practices of Dying
in Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal Society (1667)
in Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal Society (1667)
3 comments:
Urine was also a common (and abundant) mordant used with the vast majority of natural dyes used to color fiber before machine and chemical technology took over. To this day any university dye lab should have urea around in jars to allow colorants to more easily and permanently connect to the fiber.
AND...
Savvy sculptors know that the solution to getting a super quick and easy patina on their steel works is to drag the project out back and piss on it. Within a day or so it'll be a lovely rusty red-orange!
MC = my mordant hero.
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