TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT

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this time by a number of manufacturers. The leather ones were either white or
yellow, and paper was in use for this purpose at least as early as 1846. Meder
(p. 185) suggests that the stump was a normal development of rolling pieces of

1

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FIGURE 23. Spatulas and palette knives: (a) a group of palette knives typical of those
in use at present; (b) painting knives, also modern; (c) a bronze spatula in the Naples
Museum (from Berger, I and II, 264, fig. 54); (d) a bronze spatula of Pompeian origin,
also in the Naples Museum (from Berger, I and II, 266, fig. 56).

leather in order to get a fine point on them, and says that soft paper stumps
were in use as early as the XVIII century. In the Victoria and Albert Museum,
London, is the work-box of a pastel painter, Mrs Elizabeth Cay (1770-1831).
She had been a pupil of the Scottish miniature painter, Archibald Skirving (1749-
1819). The box contains small bottles of relatively pale pigment in powder form,
apparently tints from mixture with white, and with them a set of leather stumps
in various sizes. The indication is that the pastel in the case of this painter was
taken as a powder rather than as a stick and was applied entirely by means of
stumps.
Stylus or Style, a metal point, usually rather blunt and not a cutting point,
used for various accessory work in connection with painting: for making lightly
ruled lines, for locating points, and for incising on gold ground. This is an ancient
instrument and one of general utility outside of the arts. It was a frequent means
for common writing in classical times when it was employed on tablets of black-
ened wax or on pieces of broken pottery. In European painting there are many
and various uses to which it has been put; it is mentioned in connection with
incised ornament on gold, with the marking of outlines in wet plaster during fresco
painting, and with light ruling on parchment or paper. The distinction between
the entirely mechanical stylus and the metal point of silver or copper used for
drawing is sometimes hard to make, (See also Metal Point and Silver Point.)