encaumat (enkama)

encaustic (en-kâs'tik), a. and n. [ F.encaus tique, LL. encaustum, purple-red ink) is derived E. ink, q. v.] I. a. Pertaining to the art of painting with pigments in which wax enters as a vehicle, or to a painting so executed. It is a vaulted apartment,... decorated with encaustic ornaments of the most brilliant colors. B. Taylor , Lands of the Saracen, p. 123. Encaustic painting. (a) The art of painting with wax as a vehicle: strictly applicable only to painting executed or finished by the agency of heat, but applied also to modern methods of painting in wax, in which the wax-colors are di olved in a volatile oil and used in the ordinary way. In the hot proce colored sticks of wax and resin are melted on a heated palette, applied with the brush, and afterward modeled and united with a heated iron and spatula. After the surface has become cool and hard, it is rubbed with a candle and gone over with a clean linen cloth. According cloth or wood is first rubbed over with a piece of beeswax, and afterward with chalk or whiting, in order to form a surface on which the colors will adhere. The colors are mixed simply with water, and are applied in the ordinary way. When the picture is dry, it is heated, and the wax softens and absorbs the colors, forming a firm and durable coating. Encaustic painting was in very common use among the ancient Greeks and Romans. Paintings executed in encaustic occupy, color general effect, to another method, tested by Count Caylus, the ground a place midway between paintings in oil and in fresco, (b) In ceram., an arbitrary name given by Josiah Wedg. wood to his attempted imitation of the painted decoration of Greek vases, effort being to produce fired colors pavement without the and glo wall-decoration, of enamel Encaustic the tile, pattern artile is for laid or incrusted in clay of one color in a ground of clay of larly in France and England; and the art has been succe fully revived in the nineteenth century. The name is an arbitrary one, without relation to the proce of manufacture. - Encaustic vase, a vase painted with the so-called encaustic colors of Wedgwood ware. See encaustic painting ( b ). II. n. [L. encaus tic a , ing.