Photography Applied to the Ornamenting of Silk Stuffs

Photography Applied to the Ornamenting of Silk Stuffs
M, Persoz, professor of chemistry at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, of Paris, says the London Engineer, has just published a most interesting discovery of his, by which photography may be applied to the ornament: ing of silk stuffs. The bichromate of potash is a substance commonly used in photography, being extremely sensitive to light. If a piece of silk stuff impregnated with this salt be ex-posed to the rays of light penetrating through the fissures of tie window blinds in a dosed room, the points where the stuff has received these rays of light will assume a peculiar reddish tint. Now, suppose a piece of metal, or of strong paper, to be cut out after a given pattern, and to be laid on a piece of silk prepared as before, if exposed to the sun, or, better still, to simple daylight, the pattern will be reproduced in a few seconds. The pale red which the exposed parts acted upon assume, is so permanent that nothing can destroy it ; nay, I will fix other colors, such as madder, campeschy, &c., just like a mordant, and in that cast it will modify the color of those substance in absorbing it. The process may be varied as follows .—Let, a fern leaf be placed upon a piece of prepared silk, and kept flat upon it by a pane of glass ; then that part of the silk which is protected by the leaf will retails its original color, while all the rest will receive the impression of light, as above descried, forming the ground upon which the figure of the leaf will appear in white, grey, or other color the silk may have had before the operation. The richest pat-terns may be thus obtained on plain silks, and at a comparatively small expense.
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