State The Best Smalt In Lumps Appears Black Yields A Blue Powder On
:
ON THE PRIMARY, BLUE.
grinding, becomes paler on further grinding, and may be almost
decolourised by continued and excessive grinding. Smalt, it has been
stated, is merely a blue glass; and when a piece of blue glass, or a
blue crystal of sulphate of copper, is reduced to the fineness of flour,
the blue is lost. In vitrified and crystallised compounds, colour
depends on cohesion: sufficiently separate the particles, and the colour
more or less disappears. Not only, moreover, does grinding effect an
optical change in vitreous pigments, but it imposes further alteration.
That colour which was safe when locked up in a mass, crushed to minute
atoms is no longer so: imbedded in glass or enamel it will endure for
ages, but ground to impalpable powder becomes as liable to influence as
though it had never been subjected to heat at all. To sum up, vitreous
pigments are durable in a coarse or compact form, but are not more
stable than others when reduced to extreme division. As far as regards