Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1887 — Papier-Mache. [ARTICLE]

Papier-Mache.

A gentleman showed our reporter a highly polished match-box, with the remark that it was papiermache, and then proceeded to tell how that substance was made. He sad that cotton forms the basis of the paper used. The sheets are pasted together with dextrine until the mass is thick enough to go under the hydraulic press. There they are squeezed into any desired form, which, when dry, is as hard as and a good deal * lighter, bulk for bulk, than any wood. This product is poreless, fiberless, sapless, and knotless. It is subjected for twen-ty-four hours to a high drying heat. Then it can be worked with any k nd of tool. The varnishing of it is a mere detail. It is from this substance that are manufactured all those bracelets of large black beads studded with Scotch imitation diamonds, all those necklaces, pins, clasps, and trinkets of all sorts that are taken for pitch, coal or some precious wood. * Again, those handsome bracelets, composed of semilucid and opaline globules that seem to have been cut out of a stone formed by concentric layers like certain precious stones, are merely papiermache, cemented with white vkrnish and coated with the same. So, too, those beautiful nacreous, painted, and gilded trays, round tables and caskets that are known as Japanese work, are merely papier-mache. The Japanese knows but one kjgd of gilding, while we have two—the dead and the -brilliant. We have, likewise, a-liquid nacre taken ffom the scales of the whitebait that well imitates the white currant and certain transparent berries. The nacre is solidly inlaid by means of the hydraulic press, and finally the surface is finished with pumice stone to make it perfectly even, and covered with a colorless varnish of , the first quality. —Pittsburgh Chronicle.