Academy Board and Canvas Board. The so-called * mill boards/ * academy
boards/ and * canvas boards * for several decades have been supplied for the use
of amateurs and students. The term * mill board * is generic for any strong, hard-
pressed, flexible pasteboard made from rope, yarn, or other cheap fibres. C.
Roberson and Company, Ltd, estimate that mill board was developed at the end
of the XVIII century and their records show that it was in existence when the
firm was founded in 1819. It appears in the Winsor and Newton Company,
Ltd, lists of 1841.
Academy board is simply a mill board which is given a surface in preparation
for painting, primarily oil painting. It is made of paper containing chalk and size
and has a face of pale gray or white ground usually of a lead, oil, and chalk
mixture. In some cases the face is given a rough texture by having a piece of paper
laid on and pulled ofT again while the ground is still wet. Reeves and Son, Ltd,
and Winsor and Newton Company, Ltd, London, first listed this board in 1850.
The records of George Rowney and Company, Ltd, London, carry it back as far
as 1852. When it reached the continent can not be stated exactly. The old firm of
Lefranc in Paris, founded in 1775, has no records concerning it. It was manu-
factured in America by E. H. and A. C. Friedrichs Company, New York, in 1868.
Canvas board, a paper board with primed canvas fastened to one face, was
put on the market by George Rowney and Company, Ltd, in 1878. It appears in
the records of Reeves and Son, Ltd, and of Winsor and Newton Company, Ltd,
in 1884. C. Roberson and Company, Ltd, think that it was introduced between
1875 anc* 1880. * Russel board/ a type of canvas board in which the cloth is
turned back and fastened over the edge, has been sold for over fifty years by F.
Weber Company, Philadelphia. In 1887, Rowney introduced what they called
Rushmore boards, a paper board having a surface grained in imitation of canvas.
(This information has been compiled from personal correspondence with several
of the older artists* supply dealers in England, the Continent, and this country.)
Aluminum* The element aluminum is a white, soft, malleable, and ductile
metal. Its particular property is its lightness; it has only about one third the weight
of the common metals. Although not readily attacked by acids, particularly by
organic acids, it is rapidly corroded by alkalis. It has marked resistance to
atmospheric corrosion. The aluminum metal cap on the Washington Monument,
made in 1884, stiU reflects sunlight from its exposed surfaces. Under certain atmos-
pheric conditions, even brightly polished aluminum becomes frosted with time
because of the formation of a thin oxide coating.
Although compounds of aluminum were known as early as classical times, it
was not until 1825 that the Danish chemist, H. C. Oersted, became the first to
isolate this metal. Aluminum was available in small quantities for the next half
century but at prices comparable to those of the noble metals; it did not come into
commercial use until after 1886 when Charles Martin Hall discovered the process
that led to large-scale production. Although ingot aluminum was produced as