TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT 309
Sable, the hair of one of a number of Siberian minks, used in the making of fine
brushes. Sables are ordinarily prepared as round brushes, fairly long, and with a
tapered point (see also Brush).
Saucer. In modern use the saucer is a porcelain disk with a rounded depression
in the top for holding thin paint, usually washes in water color painting and
architectural rendering. In size, saucers range from one inch to nearly four inches
in diameter. They are made with covers and, in the type ordinarily used by
architects, are constructed so that one saucer forms the cover for another in a
tier of five or six.
Scraper. Some kind of blade has perhaps always been used for smoothing
paint or grounds, and it is impossible to indicate the varieties of such a tool
Eastlake (1,375) says that a wooden or horn scraper called stecca was used during
the Renaissance to spread the first coat of gesso on a wooden panel. In the modern
application of gesso, Thompson (The Practice of Tempera Painting, p. 30) de-
scribes scrapers for dry gesso to be made from steel strips or from the blades of
carpenters' planes. For scraping paint, smoothing, or removing it in the process of
painting, curved knives with a point have been made and listed by dealers in
artists' supplies. Also for this purpose, Solomon (p. 74) recommends a 'wire plush
mat' which can be bought in lengths at tool shops.
Screen Frame. As a means of laying off the area of a subject in squares cor-
responding to those marked on the paper where the draughtsman was to work, a
screen containing a series of wires so set as to form the squares has occasionally
been used. It is illustrated in woodcuts by Diirer and is to be compared to the
glass frame or tracing machine as one of the devices for getting sight proportions
common in the practice of the XVI century and later (see also Glass Frame and
Tracing Apparatus). At times a combination of the glass and screen frames seems
to have been made.
Shade and Shelter, When landscape painting reached a point at which much
of the finished work was done out-of-doors, weather conditions began to be met
by the construction of various shades or shelters for the use of the painter. One of
these, common today, is the so-called 'sketching umbrella.' This is a folding
device. The canopy cloth is on a collapsible frame of small steel ribs; the stalk is
in two or three parts, with removable joints. Such umbrellas have a diameter of
about 3! feet. The stalk is fitted with a steel spike at the end so that it can be
set firmly in the ground. Probably the use of a shade or screen of some kind has
been common in studios for a long time. A rather strange Oriental umbrella is
seen attached to easels in a number of paintings by Gerard Dow, particularly a
portrait of the artist, signed, and bearing the date of 1652, in the Czernin collec-
tion, Vienna. During the XIX century, and perhaps earlier, small tents were used
by painters and some of them were regularly sold by artists' colormen. They appear
in catalogues between 1870 and 1890.