2020 Essays

Black Sulfured Wax

Kang, Changduk Charles

A recipe for a mixture of wax, charcoal, and sulfur referred to as “black sulfured wax” appears on fol. 139v of Ms. Fr. 640. This essay contextualizes the mixture in relation to other wax compounds described in the manuscript and other craft treatises. Reconstructions of the black sulfured compound and two other wax variants were used to test the author-practitioner’s claims about the physical properties and practical uses of black sulfured wax. Only a limited number of these claims could be confirmed. Further work will have to experiment with varying the quantities of ingredients and mixing temperatures. It appears that the “black sulfured wax” was both a variation of the practice—common among early modern artisans—of mixing wax with black additives, and an extension of the author-practitioner’s many experiments with sulfur and wax.