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[Detail of] William Birch’s Paint Box, ca. 1780. Courtesy of the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection.

Enamel painting is a painstaking technique in which a glass-like flux is mixed with mineral colors and fused to a piece of metal under extreme heat.  It was hard to control the process, and the same color compound could “come from the fire very different in their seperate [sic]  preparations, from the delicacy of chymical practice.”  

William Birch’s paint box, which was handed down through six generations of his descendants, contained color charts (one dated 1782), bottles of powdered colors, a mortar and pestle to grind them with, dozens of blanks in various sizes, mostly copper but also brass and iron, more blanks already glazed and ready for painting, and a single paint brush.

See this painting and more on view now in our main gallery as part of our current exhibition, William Birch, Ingenious Artist: His Life, His Philadelphia Views, and His Legacy, through October 19, 2018.