Domestic Encyclopædia (1802)/Ebony

EBONY, an exceedingly hard and heavy wood, imported from the East Indies: it admits of being very highly polished, for which reason it is used chiefly for veneering cabinets, in Mosaic work, &c.

Ebony is of various colours, namely, black, red, and green; but the first is that most generely known and used. Cabinet-makers, inlayers, and others, frequently substitute pear-tree, and other wood, for ebony, by giving the former a black colour; which some effect by washing it in a hot decoction of gall-nuts, and after it is dry, by rubbing it over with ink, and polishing it by means of a hard brush and a little wax: others heat, or almost burn their wood till it become black, so that it acquires such a degree of hardness, that, when properly polished, it can with difficulty be distinguished from genuine ebony.