Cornelissen

Cornelissen Variegated Metal Leaf 260

Starting at: £23.00

Cornelissen Variegated Metal Leaf 260 Learn More

Cornelissen Variegated Metal Leaf 264

Starting at: £23.00

Cornelissen Variegated Metal Leaf 264 Learn More

Cornelissen Variegated Metal Leaf 273

Starting at: £26.00

Cornelissen Variegated Metal Leaf 273 Learn More

Cornelissen Variegated Metal Leaf 280

Starting at: £26.00

Cornelissen Variegated Metal Leaf 280 Learn More

Cornelissen Variegated Metal Leaf 282

Starting at: £23.00

Cornelissen Variegated Metal Leaf 282 Learn More

Cornelissen Ox Flat Lacquer

Starting at: £12.90

Soft but springy hair. For varnishing or lacquering. Also useful for watercolour washes. Learn More

Cornelissen Squirrel Flat Lacquer

Starting at: £20.05

Extra soft brush for varnishing or lacquering. Also useful for watercolour washes. Learn More

Imitation Gold Rolls

Starting at: £10.00

Imitation Gold Rolls Learn More

Aluminium Rolls

Starting at: £10.00

Aluminium Rolls Learn More

An inert substance with coarse texture and no colouring capability. Use in grounds and to provide tooth to mixed paints. Also used as an adulterant. Can be used for thickening acrylic and oil mediums. Learn More

Ferric Chloride

Starting at: £15.00

For the etching of plates for printing fine art images in intaglio. Ferric Chloride can be used as a non toxic alternative to nitric acid in the etching process. Suitable for etching most types of metals including copper, zinc, mild steel, aluminium, iron and brass. Learn More

Asphaltum Powder

Starting at: £14.30

Used in etching grounds and stopping out varnishes. Can be used as a blackish brown colourant but when combined with oil causes wrinkling and cracking. Learn More

Tallow

Starting at: £34.60

Used in printmaking. Imparts softness and greasiness. An ingredient for producing soft etching ground. Learn More

Carborundum Powder

Starting at: £11.50

Carborundum Powder. Grid of coarseness: Fine 120/220, Medium 80/120, Coarse 60/80 Learn More

Gesso di Bologna

Starting at: £12.00

Gesso di Bologna is a bright white Calcium Sulphate, or gypsum, from Italy, which can be used as a substitute for whiting in the preparation of gesso. It is ground to a particularly fine powder, which makes it a suitable ground for gilding, as the small size of the particles allows for greater compression when burnishing. Learn More

Gum Benzoin

Starting at: £14.70

Gum Benzoin is used as a fixative, slowing the dispersion of essential oils and other materials into the air. Is occasionally called for in some old varnish recipes where it was employed primarily for its odour. Learn More

Gum Damar

Starting at: £10.00

Damar is a pale, almost colourless tree resin, which is soluble in turpentine, but not in alcohol or mineral spirits. It can be used as a varnish or as a glossy painting medium in conjunction with vegetable oils, and is generally preferable to other resin-based varnishes, such as mastic varnish, as it retains its colourless appearance for a longer period of time. In encaustic painting, the inclusion of damar resin imparts toughness and gloss to the paint surface. Learn More

Gum Mastic

Starting at: £20.30

Call to Order

Gum Mastic is a tree resin, which dissolves into a clear varnish with alcohol or turpentine, but not with mineral spirits. Mastic varnishes are more prone to blooming and darkening with age than damar-based varnishes, and painting mediums that contain gum mastic can deteriorate in unpredictable ways. For this reason, it is primarily used in restoration, rather than in the production of artwork. Learn More

Gum Tragacanth

Starting at: £20.00

Gum Tragacanth is a natural tree gum with pigment-binding properties. It can be used to make a very matte watercolour, but is most commonly used in the production of soft pastels.

Please see the Formulas & Recipes section on our homepage for a recipe to make your own pastels using Gum Tragacanth (currently under construction).

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Powdered Rosin

Starting at: £13.90

Rosin is the powdered form of colophony, which is a by-product of the distillation of turpentine. Its primary application is to create tonal areas on metal plates as an aquatint resist. It is also an additive in etching grounds, where it gives a hard surface to the otherwise soft wax. Learn More

Dragon's Blood Powder

Starting at: £28.10

Dragon's Blood is a natural, resin, mentioned by Pliny in his Natural History. It has a weak tinting strength, and its rich red-colour can be fugitive in direct sunlight. It is fully soluble in alcohol, and can be used to add a warm, transparent tone to spirit varnishes. Also available in lump form.

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Dragon's Blood Pieces

Starting at: £25.40

Dragon's Blood is a natural, resin, mentioned by Pliny in his Natural History. It has a weak tinting strength, and its rich red colour can be fugitive in direct sunlight. It is fully soluble in alcohol, and can be used to add a warm, transparent tone to spirit varnishes. Also available in powdered form.

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Paraloid B72 Resin

Starting at: £11.40

Dissolved in acetone and is used as a glue/protective coat by conservators. Learn More

Carrageen Moss

Starting at: £51.00

Carrageen Moss is a seaweed that is gathered from the Irish coast, whose natural thickening properties are often exploited by the food industry. It is also used as a size in traditional paper marbling, as it allows colours to float and be manipulated on the surface of the water. Learn More

Casein Lactic

Starting at: £18.30

Casein is a protein derived from dried milk, which has been used in painting since ancient times. It can be combined with Ammonium Carbonate to form an emulsion, which acts as a durable, non-resoluble binder for pigments, producing a matte, fast-drying paint, similar in appearance to egg tempera. We use casein as a binder for our L. Cornelissen & Son Pigment Colour Charts, as it is a medium that clearly showcases the characteristics and behaviour of each pigment in its pure form. Casein paints can be applied in thin layers to watercolour paper, but would require a more rigid support, such as a gesso panel, to be applied thickly, as the comparative inflexibility of the paint layer means that it can be prone to cracking. Subsequent layers of paint should be more diluted to aid adhesion, and impasto effects are not recommended. It is possible to varnish casein paintings using an acrylic or damar varnish to obtain a glossy surface if desired, although this is not a necessary step. Casein can also be used as an ingredient in gesso, and is a suitable binder for fresco secco techniques.

Some pigments may require a wetting agent in order to fully disperse within the binder, in which case alcohol may be used.

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Isinglass

Starting at: £20.00

Isinglass is derived from the dried swim bladders of fish, with Salianski Isinglass being the highest grade available. In the Russian Icon tradition, it commonly provided the glue component in gesso recipes, and was sometimes mixed with pigment to make tempera paints, due to its high binding strength. It can be used to make a pale, clear glue, which is less prone to darkening than other animal glues, and which is particularly flexible, making it a useful material for repairing textiles. Learn More

Cornelissen Glass Mullers

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Starting at: £24.50

Cornelissen Glass Mullers are handmade using superior boro silicate laboratory glass, which is 40% harder, more heat resistant, and offers better clarity than soda-lime glass. The base of each muller is ground perfectly flat, and sand-blasted to create a fine tooth to facilitate the grinding of pigments. The tall handle features an ergonomic top, to ease fatigue when grinding large amounts of pigment. Mullers act as flat-bottomed pestles, which are used to grind pigment into a binding medium, suspending it evenly to create a uniform covering of binder around each pigment particle. Using a muller and slab, rather than simply mixing pigment and binder together, will create a more homogenised and stable paint. Use in conjunction with a Cornelissen Glass Slab to make paint efficiently. The sand-blasted texture of the muller and plate helps to push and distribute the pigment throughout the binder quickly. This will mean less grinding, and more painting! Learn More

Mixing Slab

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Starting at: £20.50

A glass slab with wooden cradle for the grinding of pigments.

The friction created between the sand-blasted surfaces of the glass slab and muller facilitates the thorough mixing of pigment and medium, creating a consistent and strong paint body. This slab can be used to manufacture many types of paint including watercolours, egg tempera and oils.

Mulling is of particular importance when making oil paint; simply mixing pigment and oil together using a palette knife will result in an unstable substance with poor plasticity, which contains a large amount of excess oil and unevenly distributed pigment particles. Thorough mulling in a figure-of-eight motion will enable the pigment to be fully combined into the binder, strengthening the resultant paint film.

PLEASE NOTE: The separate glass slabs are in stock but it is a call to order item due to the fact that we cannot guarantee its safe delivery, however well we package it. Please ring us to discuss your delivery options. In combination with the glass frame, delivery is more secure but we still cannot guarantee a delivery without breakage.

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Glass Pestles and Mortars

Starting at: £36.50

Glass Pestles and Mortars 100 or 150 mm diameter. Learn More

Agate Pestles and Mortars

Starting at: £50.00

Agate pestle and mortars are used by laboratories and artists requiring a harder material than porcelain in order to minimise the risk of contamination. *PLEASE ALLOW UP FOUR WEEKS FOR DELIVERY OF THIS ITEM* (telephone us for more information) Learn More