[SML] advice on some old pigment

[Wild, Larry]

Hi Paul. 
When I was in college in the mid-60s we used Gothic Dry Color pigment. It was an experience. You mixed the color dry and then added "Size water" to actually make something you could apply to the canvas. Size water was 1 gallon cooked animal glue dissolved in 16 gallons of water. You added some formaldehyde or carbolic acid to kill the bacteria and hopefully keep the paint from turning. If it turned, you and the actors were performing in a stinky set. You also added a little whiting to the size water to keep it from staining the paint. The paint was also dissolvable in water so  it would come off on the hands of sweaty stage hands. I don't miss it. As Pat said, the pigment would probably be considered hazardous waste.
Larry Wild
Old guy from Aberdeen, SD

-----Original Message-----
From: Stagecraft [mailto:stagecraft-bounces at theatrical.net] On Behalf Of Paul Schreiner via Stagecraft
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2014 2:57 PM
To: Stagecraft
Subject: [SML] advice on some old pigment

So I'm cleaning the paint area at my new(ish) gig from a couple dozen years or so worth of accumulated detritus and random stuff, and I came across what used to be a 20 lb. bag of dry "chrome yellow medium"
pigment from Gothic Color in New York.  There's still a couple of pounds left, but the brown paper bag it was purchased in had deteriorated and is leaking.

While I generally am getting dangerously close to Auld Pharte territory, this is something I've never actually worked with.  It's obvious that I either need to dispose of it or find better storage, but since I don't know how it would have been used, I'm not sure which way to go.  Is this something that mixes with latex?  If I dispose of it, what environmental precautions do I have to take?  Teh Google is demonstrably uninformative on this, because all the links I've found for Gothic Color pigments relating to theatre are pages from textbooks dating from 1945-1983 (with one cryptic reference found in W. Joseph Stell's "Scenery: Design and Fabrication" from 2001).  Any suggestions?  TIA

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