TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT 291
Eraser. Probably the common means of removing marks of charcoal, chalk, or
graphite from paper or parchment has been, until a century ago, with crumbs or
pellets of soft bread. Feathers as brushes are mentioned in connection with
charcoal; soft leather like chamois skin has been used extensively in the past; and
Cennino Cennini (C. XII, Thompson, p. 8) speaks of making erasures in silver-
point drawing, also with bread-crumbs. In the MSS of Jehan le Begue (Merrifield,
I, 63) an alum paste is suggested to be used for erasures in drawing. Abrasives
such as pumice and cuttlefish bones, as well as metal scrapers, served this same
purpose. Rubber seems to have become an eraser for drawings in the latter part
of the XVIII century (Meder, pp. 190—191). It was then very expensive and evi-
dently so hard that it was apt to scratch the paper. A manual on miniature paint-
ing, written by Constant-Viguier and published in 1839, warns against this.
Indian rubber in different shapes and sizes is listed in the catalogue of C. Roberson
and Company in about 1840. It was then sold by the pound. Methods of plas-
ticizing crude rubber and of introducing various grades of abrasives have given
to erasers now available on the market a very wide range of cleansing properties
from soft, pliable materials to others which act almost like sand-paper.
Fan Brush, a soft brush of fan shape, very flat, and set in a metal ferrule. It is
made in either sable or bristle and is used for special finishing, as of foliage or hair,
in oil painting (see Brush and figure i, i).
Finder, a device usually made by the painter himself for locating the area of
his composition in a natural landscape. It is merely an aperture of the size and
shape required, cut out of a thin cardboard or similar material. Occasionally cross
lines of thread or wire run through the center. (See also Sight Measure.)
Folio (see Portfolio).
Gallipot, a small cylindrical vessel made of porcelain and used for holding
diluent or medium. The name has now gone out of use in catalogues of artists*
colormen, but appears in those of Winsor and Newton for 1868 and 1870.
Gilder's Knife, a steel-bladed knife, fairly heavy, only a little flexible, and
about eight inches long (figure 12, £). This is used for cutting gold leaf into pieces
smaller than those in which it is regularly sold. Cutting is done on the cushion
after the leaf has been thoroughly flattened.
Glass Frame or Tracing Apparatus. One method of drawing much in use during
the Renaissance was in effect a tracing of the person or object represented, on a
frame which was placed between the draughtsman and his subject. The frame
contained a sheet of glass and evidently some kind of soft crayon was used on it.
Diirer illustrated this method with woodcuts and in one of these a fixed position
for the draughtsman's eye is shown (figure 27). Squaring the area of the glass
with lines is indicated by him in other representations. Meder (p. 467) says that
Holbein, Clouet, and Ottavio Leoni used an apparatus of this sort. It appears
that paper could be placed over the tracing which was on the glass, and the
drawing could be worked up from that.