History
The earliest record of shellac goes back 3000 years, but shellac is known to have been used earlier. According to the Mahabharata, an entire palace was built out of dried shellac.
Shellac was in rare use as a dyestuff for as long as there was a trade with the East Indies. Merrifield cites 1220 for the introduction of shellac as an artist's pigment in Spain. Lapis lazuli as ultramarine pigment from Afghanistan was already being imported long before this.
The use of overall paint or varnish decoration on large pieces of furniture was first popularised in Venice (then later throughout Italy). There are a number of 13th century references to painted or varnished cassone, often dowry cassone that were made deliberately impressive as part of dynastic marriages. The definition of varnish is not always clear, but it seems to have been a spirit varnish based on gum benjamin or mastic, both traded around the Mediterranean. At some time, shellac began to be used as well. An article from the Journal of the American Institute of Conservation describes the use of infrared spectroscopy to identify a shellac coating on a 16th century cassone. This is also the period in history where "varnisher" was identified as a distinct trade, separate from both carpenter and artist.
Another use for shellac is sealing wax. Woods's The Nature and Treatment of Wax and Shellac Seals discusses the various formulations, and the period when shellac started to be added to the previous beeswax recipes.
The "period of widespread introduction" would seem to be around 1550 to 1650, when it moves from being a rarity on highly decorated pieces to being a substance described in the standard texts of the day.
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