TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT 281
offered by artists* colormen. The sizes are indicated by number and commonly
run from o to 12, the last being about an inch across at the end of the ferrule. Fine
sable and camel hair brushes, when mounted in metal ferrules, are numbered in a
similar series. Those mounted in quills have the size indicated by the source of
the quill, as lark, crow, duck, goose, or swan. These, with intermediate entries,
give a series of eleven or twelve sizes.
Although minor changes and greater standardization have come with special-
ized brush manufacture, brushes themselves as implements for painting are prob-
ably not far different from those that were made and used by prehistoric man. The
Egyptian brush of reed fibre is an exception to the general rule of East or West,
for animal hair tied to a stick or set in a reed or quill has been the typical primitive
brush. In the British Museum is a short brush made of woolen yarn bound with
fine thread to a small reed handle. It was found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt among
objects of the Roman period and, although it is shown with painters' materials, it
may not have been typical of any brushes used for pictorial work. From the same
site and in the same collection is an unusual brush of the simplest possible design,
being only a very small bundle of coarse, black hair bound through the middle to
leave the ends free. Berger (I and II, p. 172) assumes, largely on the interpretation
of literary evidence, that the Greeks and Romans used bristle for their larger
brushes, and that finer work was done with a soft hair. By the time of the so-called
*Mt Athos' MS., reflecting methods of the XI and XII centuries in the region of
Greece, it is clear that many kinds of hair were used—pig, bristle, ox, and ass.
Cennino Cennini, representing largely the methods of the XIV century, speaks
of small, fine brushes of miniver, mounted in quills, and large brushes made of the
bristles of a white hog, bound in a bundle around a stick handle. These two
types, doubtless with great variations in the kinds of hair used, seem to have pre-
vailed throughout Renaissance and early modern painting. Until metal ferrules
came into use, probably in the early part of the XIX century, the fine brush had a
quill mounting and was always round in section. Paintings of artists* studios
through the XVIII century still show the heavy and the light brushes as round in
section, although a flat brush could have been made out of bristles and without
a metal ferrule.
Brush Case. As manufactured for the modern painter, this is a long box of
metal with a sliding top, usually of enamelled or plated metal, and with a handle.
Its purpose is to hold brushes for travelling or for out-of-door sketching and to
prevent their being unduly worn or frayed. Some cases have a partition to which
the brushes are fastened by means of an elastic band. Those for oil-color brushes
are about 14 inches long and often more than a inches in diameter. The water
color cases are smaller and may be either round or oval in cross section*
Brush Cleaner. Pans or vats of various sizes and shapes to hold oil or turpen-
tine (see figure 3) have been in use for many years as receptacles for cleaning paint
brushes or to prevent their drying out. Clips are often arranged above a pan so