David of Santa Barbara -- Violin Maker David Beard: A Glossary of old Italian arts and materia

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Some sources for special materials:

Zecchi of Florence produces a full range of traditional materials of the Italian renaissance arts, pointedly using Cennini's handbook circa 1400 as a starting point.
Natural Pigments is based in Northern California, but provides a very thorough range of Renaissance, medieval, and Byzantine art materials. They also provide educational information and forums to support the modern practitioner of these old art techniques.
Talas is focused on book craft and calligraphy. As part of this, they carry many traditional materials, like parchments and gold leaf.
Kremer Pigments of NYC provides a wide range of hard to find materials, including many of the ancient and traditional materials.
Wood Finishing Enterprises in Wisconsin caters to the violin maker. While not particularly focused on historical materials, still they provide many of the most traditional items.

Information and Sources for understanding the old art materials and practices:

circa 50 B.C., Vitruvius: Ten Books of Architecture

circa 1100, Theophilus: On Diverse Arts

circa 1400, Cennini: The Book of Arts

1435, Alberti: On Painting

1509, Pacioli: On Divine Proportion (with illustrations by Leonardo)

circa 1520, unknown: Marciana Manuscript (in Merrifield's collection of art treatises)

1528, Durer: Human Proportion

to buy book

circa 1540, Da Vinci: Treatise on Painting

1570, Palladio: Four Books on Architecture

circa 1570, unknown: Paduan Manuscript (in Merrifield's collection of art treatises)

1673, Capra: Geometry Instruction (ex in-law of Stradivari's first wife)

to read online or download

1683, Capra: The New Architecture

to read online or download

The books listed above all have some historical significance. Besides these, there were many other relevant books published.

As can be seen by the odd mix of recipes in old texts, the beautician, colorist, and pharmacist work from the same collection of special natural ingredients. Thus recipes for varnish, pigment, hand cream, and cough medicine occur side by side. Since roman times, the knowledge of these special natural materials and their applications were collected in books called Materia Medica.

circa 50AD, Discorides: De Materia Medica

1554, Mattioli: De Materia Medica (much expanded Italian edition of Discorides)

to read online or download

There was also a long tradition of books of secrets and recipes.

1661, Wecker: 18 Books of the Secrets of Art and Nature

to read online or download

We can see echos of this heritage continuing all the way up until around the time of world war I:

1901, Hopkins: The Scientific American Cyclopedia of Receipts, Notes, and Queries.

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A glossary of sources, materia, and methods from the arts culture surrounding the early Italian violin makers.

A:

Albert, Leon Battista

Wrote an early book formalizing perspective for the artist.

https://www.amazon.com/Painting-Classics-Leon-Battista-Alberti/dp/0140433317/

Albumen (Egg White)

A basic material for the renaissance artist. Egg white is largely water and protein. As a protein, it acts as a binder.

Pigments can be mixed in egg white to make a paint.

Striking a good balance between binder and pigment is called 'tempering'

Egg white can be used to 'size' wood.

Wipe on and let dry
The egg white will raise the wood grain and open the pores
The dried egg protein will pull together and firm the wood fiber

Water soluble stains like Saffron can be dissolved in transparent colors

Can make brilliant transparent color
Named 'putrido' because of smell that can develop
Smell mostly comes if you add water, and then let sit more than a day
Can be made thicker by allowing water to evaporate off, called inspisation
If allowed to completely dry, makes transparent friable material than can be redissolved with water.

Egg white has several different proteins and can be refined through whisking and straining, though unnecessary for most uses. Since this was important for use of egg white in early photography, the topic is often overemphasized with other applications.

Alchemy

Precursor to modern chemistry.

Alcohol Spirits

Fermentation gives alcohol. And a 'spirit' is made by evaporating something and condensing the steam. Condensing alcohol spirits purifies the alcohol and reduces water content.

Alcohol can be used to extract 'tinctures' or stains from many things. For example Buckthorn.
Alcohol is a powerful solvent, and can be used to clean many things.
Because of rapid evaporation, alcohol also tends to cool things, and will for example close the pores in wood.
Alcohol is the solvent in traditional 'spirit varnishes'.

Spirit varnishes were less common until good water free Alcohol Spirits became more available

Aloe Socotrina

A yellow brown colorant. Interesting in part as it illustrates the vast connections of the ancient European and Roman materia for arts and medicine to such remote places as Africa, Arabia, and even Socotra Island.

Alum

An aluminum salt much valued in the past.
Alum washes attach readily to many materials, including cloth, paper, leather, and wood.
Alum was used as a mordant helping stain colorants to bond to materials, and tending to brighten the coloring effect.
Alum was also used to precipitate alumina.
If precipitated with a stain colorant, the alumina captures the color making a transparent pigment 'lake' colors from stains. These were used to make transparent 'lakes' or glazes of color. Madder lakes are an important example.
The ionic nature that makes alum also lead it to pull to itself, causing crystallizing, lattice, and stiffening effects. For example, alum was traditionally used to enhance the crunchiness of pickle.
Alum is sometimes used as a sizing.

Amber

Amber primarily refers to ancient tree balsam resins that have hardened to a near gemstone like character. In being fossilized, amber is distinct from the various resins that are harvested after flowing from living trees. Between hard fossilized amber from ancient trees, and softer resins from living trees, there are various copals. Copals are from long dead trees, and often dug from the ground. But copals are not as ancient or fully hardened as amber.
The modern use of the term amber can be ambiguous. Today, it might refer merely to something amber colored. Properly, amber means ancient tree resins hardened or fossilized to a polishable somewhat stone like character. But in modern commerce the term is used to market many things.
The use the term in old texts can also be ambiguous.
Amber is too hard to be directly dissolved or cooked into varnish the way resins are. Amber must first be 'run', which generally involves higher temperatures than normal varnish cooking. In the industrial era, making varnish with amber has been variously treated as a secret specialty, an impossibility, or a lost art.
Some old texts refer to amber varnish, or the use of amber in making a varnish. But it isn't necessarily clear if an author is talking about 'amber like' varnish, or about cooking varnish with real amber. Was the knowledge of 'running' amber and cooking it into varnish widespread among craftsmen centuries ago? Or were these authors applying the word amber to some more easily worked copal or resin?

Apprentice

As a system of craft guilds, masters, and apprentices was in full swing during the era of classical violin making. However, we have only a very limited knowledge of the use of apprentices in Italian making.

Asphaltum

Essentially natural black tar. This can be dissolved in oil or oil varnish to make a warm and darkening glaze. Though uncommon today, the use of asphaltum as an oil soluble transparent black is ancient.

B:

Balsam

A balsam is a flowing combination tree resins and solvents, or resin as it flows from the same time tree as sap. Some saps after flowing from the tree will harden into drops. These resins include mastic, sandarac, benjamin, damar, and myrrh. Other saps remain flowing as balsams.
These balsams include 'Venice turpentine' which is Larch balsam, 'Strasbourg turpentine' which is balsam from silver fir or sometimes spruce, 'Canadian balsam' from the North American balsam fir, and 'Copaiba balsam' from the South American trees of genus Copaifera.
For commerce, these balsams are often imitated by adding turpentine solvent to common rosin to make it flow.

Beech wood

A common hardwood in traditional European woodwork.
Generally dimensionally stable, solid, and durable. Beech was often chosen for plane bodies.
Violin makers sometimes used beech to substitute the maple parts of an instrument.
Beech often shows a characteristic fleck pattern.

Beeswax

Beeswax is an important naturally occurring wax with special properties, harvested from bee hives. Naturally occurring, beeswax contains many complex components from bees beside wax. For this reason, overly refined beeswax that too completely isolates and purifies the wax can be less useful than more simply and naturally harvested beeswax.
Natural beeswax is both antimicrobial, and emulsifying.

Benjamin

Benjamin dissolved in alcohol spirits makes a bright clear varnish.
Strongly aromatic, Benjamin has a cinnamon like scent.

http://www.woodfinishingenterprises.com/varnish.html

Bevel or False Square

Bile

Bile from oxen or other large animals is an ancient strong yellow colorant. Making things appear golden is a major theme running across the old arts. Bile is mentioned in some recipes for this purpose. Closely related, crushed gallstone is also sometimes cited.

Bisiach/Fiorini Spirit Varnish

This a formulation of alcohol spirit varnish used successfully by some Italian makers, possibly tracing back to Ceruti.

Bisiach version:
       4 parts Sandarac
       2 parts Lac
       1 part Mastic
       1 part Benjamin
       2 parts Venice Turpentine
             -- all dissolved in alcohol
Fiorini version:
   4 parts Sandarac
       2 parts Lac
       2 parts Mastic
       1 part Elemi
       2 parts Venice Turpentine
             -- all dissolved in alcohol

Bitumen

Bitumen, tar, asphalt, pitch, and asphaltum are all sometimes used interchangeably. These materials range from near mineralized forms like Gilsonite, to almost fluid forms like some of the runnier tars.
For their stickiness, these materials often appear in recipes for 'mastic' and 'pitch' adhesives.
To darken or warm transparent glazes, these are dissolved in oil or oil varnish.

Black Oil

A traditional strongly drying oil. Made by cooking linseed oil with litharge lead.

http://www.zecchi.it/products.php?category=66

Bole

A very fine smooth clay like preparation, 'fatty' in the old sense of slippery between the fingers. This is traditionally the guilder's final surfacing material before laying metal leaf. Gold and silver leafs are usually prepared so thin as to be somewhat transparent. For a warmer effect, guilders often use a red bole, with the color mainly from a red iron oxide earth.

Bone Black

The darkest of the traditional and ancient black pigments, made from bone, ivory, or antler. Charcoal can be from any of these by sufficient heating without air, traditionally with coals in a covered crucible. The resulting charcoal is ground into pigment.

Bow Drill or Bow Lathe

A bow like stick and a cord or strap wrapped around a spindle can so arrange to spin the spindle rapidly by pulling the bow back and forth. Such bow driven spindles can be used to drill, or to operate a lathe.
Ancient Egyptian art shows workmen using this technique.
The artifacts left from the classical Cremona violin workshops include a lathe and drill using this technique.

http://www.maestronet.com/forum/index.php?/topic/323606-p-guarneri-peg-lathe/

Bow or Frame Saw

These are common traditional European woodworking saws, where the cutting blade is attached at both ends under tension to prevent buckling.
Waterwheel powered frame saws existed at the time of classical violin making. A powered frame saw could be set up with several appropriately spaced blades to cut multiple pieces of rib stock from a block of maple at once.

Braccio (Arm)

The braccio was part of a system of length measure going back to Roman times. The standardization and precision of measure we assume today had not yet developed during the era of classical violin making.
Based approximately on arm length, the braccio varied not only from region to region and town to town, from one craft or purpose to another. In Cremona for example, the braccio for cloth merchants was more than 20% longer than braccio scribe in stone for general town reference at the base of the clock tower.
Not only were there countless different standards scattered through Italian, we also see evidence that any particular standard wasn't handled as precisely as we assume today. From old Cremona we have three examples to compare where we might expect the braccio to be handled precisely, but they all disagree slightly. First we have the clock tower's stone inscribed braccio, divided somewhat unevenly into 12 oncia. This braccio measures around 484mm. Next, there exists a Stradivari paper for a harp with one of the lengths inscribed as 2 braccio. This yields a braccio measuring 483mm. Third, Cremona architect and mathematician Allesandro Capra (ex father-in-law of Stradivari's first wave) published a book including a reference woodcut illustrating four oncia. However, the lines of the illustration are and imprecise, giving a Braccio perhaps as much as 3% shorter than the other two.
In Cremona, the braccio (arm) = 2 piede (foot). And 1 braccio = 12 oncia (inch or ounce). 1 oncia = 12 punto (point). Even these relationship had variations for some regions.

Brescia Steal

Brescian steel was one of the earlier and better European made steels. Until later eras, steel making was less scientific technology and more a mysterious and traditional craft. Brescia had both the spruce for violins, and the steel to make tools to carve them.

Brick Dust

Crushed terra cotta dust from brick and tile had a place in the Italian arts materia, for example as a thickener in mastic pastes, or in substrate preparing grounds.

Brazilwood

We know pigments were valued, but amazingly the world's fifth largest country is named after a colorant. The indigenous pau wood could be used as a red colorant, replacing sandalwood from India. Since the wood produces a deep red reminiscent of glowing coal embers in a brazier, Europeans named the wood brazilwood.
A variety of brazilwood, imported from the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, eventually became the preferred wood for making violin bows.

Bristle

Today an artist most likely buys premade brushes and prepared paints. But in the era of classical violin making, almost everything was made in the workshop from the commonly traded materia. Hog bristle was a frequent brush material. And, as reflected in art texts of the time, artisans made brushes for themselves in the workshop.

Buckthorn

Variously called pink berry, French berry, and other names, buckthorn berries and bark were used as a yellow colorant, for example in an alcohol tincture.

Burnish

Burnishing refers to smoothing a surface primarily with compression by rubbing with downward pressure. Most characteristically this is part of the guilder's craft, done with agate or hematite stone. In other applications, bone or ivory might be used to burnish.
Violin makers today sometimes talk of burnishing a varnish with the hand or perhaps a cloth like linen.
Rubbing with a significantly cutting abrasive is different than burnishing. But with some mildly abrasive rubbings there is as much or compressive burnishing of the surface as cutting. Rubbing with horsetail reed for example, especially if lubricated, tends to burnish and clean more than cut.

Burnt Sienna

Various traditional materials were used both in raw and in cooked or 'burnt' versions. Burnt Sienna is the cooked version of raw Sienna earth. Burnt Sienna is a reddish brown earth, tending toward very fine particle size compared to other earth pigments.
Raw and burnt Sienna contain both iron oxide and magnesium oxide.
Raw Sienna is lighter, more yellow orange, and tends to a fine particle size. Cooking shifts the burnt Sienna browner, redder, and toward an even finer particle size.
Sienna earths are named after the region and town where the pigments were originally sourced. Earth colors are clay like dirt colored with iron oxide and perhaps other compounds. Such deposits occur naturally around the world, and were used by hominid artisans even before homo sapiens. Today, the name is often used to refer merely to color tone. But properly, the names should mean actual pigment earths, either natural or synthesized, sharing the composition, color, and characteristics of the original traditional earths from Siena, Italy.

Burnt Umber

This is the burnt version of Umber earth, a pigment originally sourced from Umbria, Italy. The Umber earths are somewhat similar in composition to the Siennas, but with a higher portion of magnesium. This makes the Umbers darker and more covering, and perhaps browner and greyer. The burnt Umber is shifted darker and more brown and colored than the raw.
Umbers are traditional shadow pigments in the Italian arts.
Antiquers and forgers use Umbers (and asphalt) to make things look dirty and old.

C:

Calcite

Calcite is a soft stable mineral for of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Calcite is part of shells, limestone, and marble. A crust of calcite forms as water evaporates from lime water (the water from a lime pit).
Clear calcite have the special property of being strongly birefringent, that is it splits light off in two directions.

Calipers

Any of many devices used to measure between opposite sides of an object by touching both sides.

Common outside calipers:

Wooden calipers from Strad tool collection:

http://www.kevinleeluthier.com/stradivari_tools/StradivariusTools.htm

Cennini

Cennino Cennini, an artist trained Florence in the line of Giotto, and working in Padua and Florence has left use a thorough documentation of Italian art materials and method at the beginning of 1400s. This a full century before actual violins were made, but exactly when the ideas behind violin making, and the precursor instruments leading to the violin were developing.

https://www.amazon.com/Craftsmans-Handbook-Libro-dell-Arte/dp/048620054X

Ceruse

Ceruse, or white lead, was an important classical white pigment, perhaps the most valued. It was traded as a prepared materia, but artists also commonly knew how to prepare ceruse from lead and vinegar.

Chalk

Chalk is a naturally occurring soft kind of limestone(calcite), formed from under sea sedimentary deposits of microorganism shells.
Chalk is one kind of 'whiting' that can find use in grounds.

Chamfer

A chamfer is either a straight or rounded softening of a corner or an edge where surfaces meet.
Chamfers can add decorative and elegant detail
Chamfers can make an edge sturdier, protecting it from chipping or damage.
In waveform transmission materials, chamfers (as well as true and approximate horn shapes) can reduce reflections at joins and bounds, especially at higher frequencies.
Some reserve the term for the simplest straight bevels, but it can also encompass more sophisticated or complex work.

Cheese Glue

This is one of the ancient glues, perhaps going back to prehistoric times, based on the milk protein casein.
The protein for cheese glue is open with alkali, in contrast to hide glue protein which is opened with heat and water. Cheese glue applications tend to be less reversible.
In Roman times, waterproof cheese glue recipes were known, mixing cheese curd with lime putty.

Chios Island

The island of Chios was the ancient source of several items of the classical materia.
Chios continues today to be the primary traditional source for mastic.
Chios was also home to the terebinth tree, who's balsam was important in the old materia. Our word turpentine derives from this.