Recipes for layered imitation-onyx plaques; canal sketches
Building patterned slabs on a curled cabbage leaf and on tripe, sawn into knife handles
This working sheet gathers two recipes for making patterned decorative slabs together with a pair of canal sketches. In one recipe Leonardo builds up transparent, white, black and sardonyx-coloured layers of a mixture over a crinkled winter cabbage leaf, then lifts the leaf and repeats on the other side to form a finger-thick plaque that is sawn and planed into knife handles imitating banded onyx; a companion note uses veal and ox tripe the same way. Two sketches at the top show canals with an undulating bed, and brief jottings sit among the drawings. Blobby and concentric-ring figures illustrate the layered, stone-like patterns produced.
On this page
An onyx-like slab built up on a curled cabbage leaf
To imitate banded onyx, coat a large winter cabbage leaf, crinkled by the December cold, with a transparent mixture, then white, black and sardonyx-coloured layers. Lift the leaf, repeat on the underside, and you have a finger-thick slab that, sawn and planed to reveal three or four layers, makes handsome knife handles; curled lettuce serves as well.
Coating veal and ox tripe with the mixture
On the fine inner surfaces of veal and ox tripe, throw the mixture and smear it, laying several coats with different materials without letting them dry. Then remove the tripe, fill the hollow carefully, and let it dry.
Two sketches of canals with an undulating bed
Across the head of the sheet Leonardo draws two canals whose beds are shown as an undulating, wave-like profile.