I'm going to guess its the same as woodworking shellac but mixed much more concentrated. Great thing about shellac is a little alcohol cleans it right up.
Oddly, the history of shellac seems to lost. It's a beetle- it's what a female lac beetle does. In our usage, it is French polish, it is resin, it is sticky stuff and the basis of paints and varnishes and many plastics. It is a hard gloss when dissolved in alcohol and more sensibly is generally too hard and brittle for as it arrives in flakes.
As far as an earlier generation is concerned, it was generally modified for all sorts of reasons but it was added with things to soften it. One was yet another natural product- beeswax and rubber. I've still got my couple of rubber plants but I have largely forgotten making and modifying 'resins'
I was reading Bill Bryson's book 'At Home'. He's the guy that came from Des Moines as somebody had to. His bit about the little lac beetle is worth another read and so is his history of 'a short history of Everything Else.
Today, man can reduce the variables from natural products- you know this quality control lark. I gave it up with snowflakes of thallic anhydride from boiling these beetle things and the other bits that go into 'pot' - and let someone else poison his life.
But that's shellac- been around since Stradivarius varnished his violins and cellos-- and we still haven't worked out precisely how he made the stuff.
Read it up, it's fun because we are returning to other natural products like- pissing on our steels. Apparently, the urine of virgin little boys was highly prized.
Me, I'm not surprised!
Cheers
