ILLUSTRATED WITH PEN AND GRAVER.

PAINTING ON VELVET.

NUMEROUS inquiries have been addressed to us for some instructions in the elegant art of painting on velvet, and we have at length prepared an article on the subject, which, we think, will satisfy our readers. Papers on ornamental work are exceedingly useful, when, by the aid of practical experience, they convey simple and precise directions which can easily be learned.

Among the various accomplishments of the present day, no fancy work is perhaps more elegant, produces a better effect, and is, at the same time, more easily and quickly performed, than painting on velvet. Possessing all the beauty of color of a piece of wool-work, it is in every way superior, as the tints used in this style of painting do not fade; and an article, which it would take a month, at least, to manufacture with the needle, may be completed, in four or six hours, on white velvet, with the softest and most finished effect imaginable. Another recommendation greatly in favor of this sort of work is, that it does not require the knowledge of drawing on the part of the pupil, being done with formulas, somewhat in the manner of the old Poonah paintings, except that in this case the colors are moist. If these formulas be kept steady, a failure is next to impossible.

The first thing necessary to be done, after obtaining the colors and the velvet (which should be cotton, or more properly velveteen, as most common cotton velvets are not sufficiently thick, and silk velvet, besides the expense, is not found to answer), is to prepare the formula for the group intended to be painted. Get a piece of tracing or silver paper the size of the cushion, mat, or screen you wish to paint, then lay it carefully upon the group you wish to copy, and trace through. Should the paper slip, the formula will be incorrect; it will therefore be well to use weights to keep all flat. Having traced your flowers, remove the thin paper, and laying it on a piece of cartridge paper the same size, go over the pencil marks by pricking them out with a fine needle, inserted in a cedar stick. Now that you have your whole pattern pricked out clearly upon a stiff paper, take eight or nine more pieces of cartridge paper, of the same size as the first, and laying them one by one, in turn, under the pricked pattern, shake a little powdered indigo over, and then rub with a roll of list or any soft material. The indigo, falling through the punctures, will leave the pattern in blue spots on the sheets of paper beneath; then proceed in like manner with the remaining formulas until you have the selfsame pattern, neatly traced, in blue dots on them all. Next, with a sharp pen-knife, you must cut out the leaves, petals, and calices of the group, taking care to cut only a few on each formula, and those not too near together, lest there should not be sufficient room to rub between the spaces, and that, for instance, the green tint intended for the leaf should intrude on the azure or crimson of the nearest convolvulus; for it must be kept in mind that in this sort of work erasure is impossible.

The foregoing diagrams will show how the formulas should be cut, so as to leave proper spaces, as above mentioned. The shading denotes the parts cut out.

Some leaves may be cut out in two halves, as the large ones in the pattern; others all in one, as the small leaf: but it is chiefly a matter of taste. The large leaves should, however, generally be divided. In each formula there should be two guides—one on the top of the left-hand side, the other at the bottom of the right-hand corner—to enable the formulas always to be placed on the same spot in the velvet. For instance, as in Formula 2, A and B are the two guides, and are parts cut out, in Formula 2, of leaves, the whole of which were cut out in No. 1; and therefore, after No. 1 is painted, and No. 2 applied, the ends of the painted leaves will show through, if No. 2 be put on straight; if, when once right, the formula is kept down with weights at the corners, it cannot fail to match at all points. Care should, however, be taken never to put paint on the guides, as it would necessarily leave an abrupt line in the centre of the leaf. While cutting out the formulas, it is a good plan to mark with a cross or dot those leaves which you have already cut out on the formulas preceding, so that there will be no confusion. When your formulas are all cut, wash them over with a preparation made in this manner: Put into a wide-mouthed bottle some resin and shellac—about two ounces of each are sufficient; on this pour enough spirits of wine or naphtha to cover it, and let it stand to dissolve, shaking it every now and then. If it is not quite dissolved as you wish it, add rather more spirits of wine; then wash the formulas all over on both sides with the preparation, and let them dry. Now taking Formula No. 1, lay it on the white velvet, and place weights on each corner to keep it steady; now pour into a little saucer a small quantity of the color called Saxon green, shaking the bottle first, as there is apt to be a sediment; then take the smallest quantity possible on your brush (for, if too much be taken, it runs, and flattens the pile of the velvet; the brush should have thick, short bristles, not camel-hair, and there ought to be a separate brush for each tint: they are sold with the colors). Now begin on the darkest part of the leaf, and work lightly round and round in a circular motion, taking care to hold the brush upright, and to work more, as it were, on the formula than on the velvet; should you find the velvet getting crushed down and rough, from having the brush too damp, continue to work lightly till it is drier, then brush the pile the right way of it, and it will be as smooth as before. Do all the green in each formula in the same manner, unless there be any blue-greens, when they should be grounded instead, with the tint called grass-green.

Next, if any of the leaves are to be tinted red, brown, or yellow, as Autumn leaves, add the color over the Saxon green, before you shade with full green, which will be the next thing to be done; blue-green leaves to be shaded also with full green. Now, while the green is yet damp, with a small camel-hair pencil vein the leaves with ultramarine. The tendrils and stalks are also to be done with the small brush. You can now begin the flowers: take, for instance, the convolvulus in the pattern. It should be grounded with azure, and shaded with ultramarine (which color, wherever used, should always be mixed with water, and rubbed on a palette with a knife); the stripes in it are rose-color, and should be tinted from the rose saucer. White roses and camellias, lilies, &c., are only lightly shaded with white shading; and if surrounded by dark flowers and leaves so as to stand out well, will have a very good effect.

Flowers can easily be taken from nature in the following manner: A A, D D, is a frame of deal, made light, and about two feet long, and eight or ten inches in width. The part D D is made to slide in a groove in A A, so that the frame may be lengthened or shortened at pleasure. A vertical frame, C, is fixed to the part D, and two grooved upright pieces, B B, fixed to the other part. These uprights should be about nine inches high, and C half that height. There is also a piece of wood at the end A of the frame, marked D, with a small hole for the eye, and there is a hole in the top C opposite to it. S is a piece of glass, sliding in the grooves in B B. In the hole H is placed the flower or flowers to be copied. If a group is wished, more holes should be made, and the flowers carefully arranged. The eye being directed to this through the hole in E, it can be sketched on the glass by means of a pencil of lithographic chalk. It is afterwards copied through by slipping the glass out, laying it on a table, and placing over it a piece of tracing-paper. When traced on the paper, proceed as before to make the formulas.

Of course, so delicate a thing as white velvet will be found at length to soil. When this is the case, it can be dyed without in any way injuring the painting. Dye in this manner: Get an old slate-frame, or make a wire frame; add to it a handle, thus; then tie over it a network of pack-thread; next, cut a piece of cardboard the exact size of your group, so as completely to cover it, the edges of the cardboard being cut into all the ins and outs of the outer line of the group; then placing it carefully over the painting, so as to fit exactly, lay a weight on it to keep it in place. Then dip a large brush into the dye, hold the frame over the velvet (which should be stretched out flat—to nail the corners to a drawing-board is best), and by brushing across the network, a rain of dye will fall on the velvet beneath. Do not let the frame touch the velvet; it should be held some little way up. Then just brush the velvet itself with the brush of dye, to make all smooth, and leave the velvet nailed to the board till it is dry. Groups, whether freshly done, or dyed, are greatly improved, when perfectly dry, by being brushed all over with a clean and rather soft hat-brush, as it renders any little roughness, caused by putting on the paint too wet, completely smooth and even as before. Music-stools, the front of pianos, ottomans, banner-screens, pole-screens, and borders for table-cloths, look very handsome when done in this manner.

INTERESTING DISCOVERY AT JERUSALEM.

THE following, from a letter dated Jerusalem, May 16, 1853, has been sent by Mr. James Cook Richmond, for publication. "I was spending a couple of days in Artas, the hortus clusus of the monks, and probably the 'garden inclosed' of the Canticles, when I was told there was a kind of tunnel under the Pool of Solomon. I went and found one of the most interesting things that I have seen in my travels, and of which no one in Jerusalem appears to have heard. I mentioned it to the British Consul, and to the Rev. Mr. Nicolayson, who has been here more than twenty years, and they have never heard of it. At the centre of the eastern side of the lowest of the three pools, there is an entrance nearly closed up; then follows a vaulted passage some 50 feet long, leading to a chamber about 15 feet square and 8 feet high, also vaulted; and from this there is a passage, also arched, under the pool, and intended to convey the water of a spring, or of the pool itself, into the aqueduct which leads to Jerusalem, and is now commonly attributed to Pontius Pilate. This arched passage is six feet high, and three or four feet wide. Each of the two other pools has a similar arched way, which has not been blocked up, and one of which I saw by descending first into the rectangular well. The great point of interest in this discovery is this: It has now been thought for some years that the opinion of the invention of the arch by the Romans has been too hastily adopted. The usual period assigned to the arch is about B. C. 600. We thought we discovered a contradiction of this idea in Egypt, but the present case is far more satisfactory. The whole of the long passage of 50 feet, the chamber 15 feet square, the two doors, and the passage under the pools in each case, are true 'Roman' arches, with a perfect keystone. Now, as it has never been seriously doubted that Solomon built the pools ascribed to him, and to which he probably refers in Ecclesiastes ii. 6, the arch must of course have been well known about or before the time of the building of the first temple, B. C. 1012. The 'sealed fountain,' which is near, has the same arch in several places; but this might have been Roman. But here the arched ways pass probably the whole distance under the pools, and are therefore at least coeval with them, or were rather built before them, in order to convey the water down the valley. What I saw convinced me that the perfect keystone Roman arch was in familiar use in the time of Solomon, or 1,000 years before the Christian era."