FreeShip- Dammar Gum, Rosin, Light Color- (Prompt rebate on orders with 3 or more FreeShip items!)

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This is a high grade dammar. It is transparent when broken, having no fine particles of dirt which would make it translucent or opaque. It does have some isolated bark and twig pieces, which will be filtered out when dissolving it in turpentine as a picture varnish. Or they will settle to the bottom when heated, melted, and stirred in with beeswax to make an encaustic base wax.
Currently we carry 3 tree "gums" ("resins" or "rosins"). They are: Pine rosin, dammar gum, and gum arabic and are all derived from the sap of trees.
Please go to the bottom of this description to see formulas for varnishes and encaustic using dammar.
Dammar is a tree resin from the Dipterocarpaceae family of trees (primarily genera Shores and Hopea) in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia. Most people in the fine arts community will instantly recognize the name dammar as an oil painting material (a varnish). It's use as an ingredient in encaustic painting is less widely known.
In oil painting it should only be used as a painting varnish and avoided as an ingredient in paint medium. After a number of years, it yellows and darkens, and it becomes more brittle and cracks over time.
Our shop currently sells three types of tree resins: Dammar Gum, Gum Arabic, and Pine Rosin. I think it's helpful to compare the two "rosins" (or "resin" and "rosin" if you prefer; Dammar is more often called a resin and pine rosin, well get the picture), especially if you have worked with one but not the other. Both are basically purified, dried tree sap.
Since dammar comes from several genera of trees, it's physical properties will vary with the source.
If comparing high quality grades of dammar and pine rosin (also depending on the source), both are mostly transparent (dammar pale yellow, pine rosin light yellow). Both are brittle (friable) when dry and at room temperatures. Both have reasonable low melting temperatures with dammar being higher, (dammar melting at around 240F to 350F and pine rosin at around 170F to 250F). Both are very soluble in turpentine, but pine rosin is also very soluble in ethanol, while dammar is much less so. Damar is more susceptible to "whiting" (cloudiness) if moisture in present when made into a varnish. Probably a factor for that is dammar's lesser solubility compared to pine rosin. Rosin is more combustible than dammar. Damar can be tacky when warm but at room temperatures, pine rosin is much more tacky (one of it's most well known qualities). Both can be found in a fossilised resin state, the pure specimens being a transparent yellow and known as "amber", which is used as a gem in jewelry. Chemically, dammar is a triterpenoid resin containing many triterpenes (such as oleanonic acid, oleanane, dammarenolic acid, and dammarane), while pine rosin is the resinous part of an oleo-resin which comes from several species of pine. The resinous fraction consists mostly of abietic acid. The volatile fraction consists of turpentine. Pine rosin is more versatile than damar, having many more uses. One reason for this may be the lower melting temperature of pine rosin. Another may be cost. Dammar is more expensive. Both are non-toxic. One study found that when comparing films of varnish made from mastic and dammar, mastic was found to be harder and more brittle. { https://www.jstor.org/stable/1505007?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents }.

It is harvested by making incisions in the bark of the trees. When fresh it is in a soft, viscous, highly aromatic state. It loses its odor upon drying. Dried rounded chunks of it are called "dammar tears". An often cited date as the "introduction" of dammar varnish for paintings is 1826, but for other uses dammar is just one of many tree resins that have been in use since antiquity.
A major use for many tree resins was as caulking (with other ingredients such as pitch) for ancient wooden ships. Mastic gum in particular was highly valued as a superior resin because of it's adhesive and long wear properties. Another use for tree resins was in the type of painting known as "encaustic". The term derives from the Greek "enkaustikos", meaning to "burn in". It uses melted "paint" made of beeswax and usually some type of tree resin (and other ingredients). It is applied when molten. The oldest surviving encaustic panel paintings are the Romano-Egyptian Fayum mummy portraits from the 1st Century BC. Mastic gum also has a Greek connection, Chios island, being the only historical location where it is harvested. That makes it the "real stuff", both rare and expensive. The Wikipedia article on Mastic reports that "Mastic has been harvested for at least 2,500 years" in Greek antiquity from the Mastic trees primarily on the Greek island of Chios.
"As of 2018 there were twenty-four mastichochoria, or mastic villages, on the island of Chios dedicated to the cultivation and production of mastic".
Mastic was used into the 20th century and was still the painting varnish of choice when dammar was introduced (in 1826). Dammar slowly replaced mastic, most likely out of necessity from the increasing rarity and expense of mastic. Like dammar, mastic should only be used as a varnish, not as a pigment medium ingredient.

Mixing Instructions for dammar varnish and encaustic medium with dammar:
A basic set of instructions for making a 10 to 1 ratio of encaustic medium can be found here:
{ https://www.earthpigments.com/artists-encaustic/ } :
"10 parts Beeswax.
1 part Dammar Resin lumps.
Dammar Resin has a higher melting point than beeswax, so it should be melted first, then the beeswax added. Neither should be heated over an open flame, or to temperatures above 250 F. Stir to blend while melting, then pour the mixture into aluminum foil muffin pans for cooling. Although the dammar resin will contain some impurities, these will fall to the bottom of the mixture as it hardens. Each contained portion can now be mixed with pigments or stored to be melted again with pigments.
Mixing Pigments into Your Encaustic Medium-
As the recipe for encaustic differs, so too does the method for mixing dry pigments into your created medium. It depends upon how you as an artist prefer to work. Some people will use a smaller shallower molds to create individual colors. Other people prefer to mix as they work, dipping their brush into the melted wax, then directly into the pigment powder, mixing it thoroughly with the brush."

A more detailed set of encaustic instructions are here:
{ http://www.gregnoblinart.com/blog/2014/12/16/making-encaustic-wax-medium }.

For a picture varnish the instructions give less detail because the viscosity of the varnish is up to you. The greater the dammar dissolved in the solvent the thicker (higher viscosity) it will be.
The CAMEO website has a typical set of instructions { http://cameo.mfa.org/wiki/Dammar } :
".....To be prepared as a varnish, dammar pieces are placed in a cheesecloth bag partially submersed in turpentine. After a few hours, the dammar is dissolved and any residual material remaining in the bag is thrown out. This forms a high-quality, clear varnish for paintings. However, the presence of water during application may cause it to dry with a whitish bloom."
So, if you want a higher viscosity varnish put more dammar in the cheesecloth bag, less for a lower viscosity.

Another set of instructions for varnish which sets the viscosity by giving quantities (for a 35% solution):
{ https://www.pieterbroertjes.nl/make-dammar-varnish/ }
An edited version giving just the highlights:
"200 ml of gum turpentine...
100 gram Dammar Gum Resin Chunks...
Fill the pantyhose with the 100 gram Dammar Gum Resin Chunks...
Then let the pantyhose with varnish resin chunks down into the gum turpentine...
Use the lid to close the glass jar carefully. It prevents turpentine to evaporate.
Wait several days up to a week."

Note the difference in how long it will take to dissolve the dammar, one says several hours, the other several days! It could depend on how big the dammar chunks are (smaller chunks will dissolve faster), or the type of turpentine and type of dammar. The pantyhose will catch any twig parts present in the dammar, giving you a clean varnish.-

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Oct 18, 2023

Always fun to shop here!

Christy