Excerpt from Varnishes, Lacquers, Printing Inks and Sealing-Waxes, Their Raw Materials and Their Manufacture: To Which Is Added the Art of Varnishing and Lacquering, Including the Preparation of Putties and of Stains for Wood, Ivory, Bone, Horn, and LeatherThere are few products of the chemical industry which find such universal use as lacquers and var nishes. They are absolutely indispensable to the mechanic as well as to the artist. We need only call to mind that the wood of our ¿oors and furniture, many articles of leather, our carriages, the component parts of iron bridges, and other articles of metal ex posed to the weather, are Varnished or lacquered for the purpose of giving them a pleasing appearance or protecting them against atmospheric in¿uences.The Old civilized races of eastern Asia - the Hindus, Chinese, but particularly the Japanese - are masters of the art of manufacturing varnishes and lacquers, they being far in advance of us in this respect. However, this is not due to the fact that they surpass us in chemical knowledge as far as it refers to this branch of industry, the excellent quality of their products must rather be attributed to the conscientious labor which marks all Japanese work and to the raw mate2 varnishes, lacquers, and printing inks.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.