Sweet oil

Description

1) An obsolete name for a lotion primarily composed of Glycerol that was initially sold in 1783.

2) An old name usually used for Olive oil but can refer to any mild, Semidrying oil such as cottonseed, sunflower, or rapeseed oil. In the 19th century, sweet oil was mixed with colorants and used to stain the edges of books (Roberts and Etherington 1982).

Resources and Citations

• R. Mayer, The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques, Viking Press, New York, 1981

• G.S.Brady, Materials Handbook, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1971 Comment: p. 370

• Richard S. Lewis, Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 10th ed., 1993

• Matt Roberts, Don Etherington, Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: a Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1982

• Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997