Lac can come in different stages of purification, It is also possible to do at your own studio.
Lac is being harvested from the field as ‘stick lac’, then being washed and crushed at the factory to ‘seed lac’. Most of the samples in this archive were made out of ‘seed lac’.
There is also an option to buy ‘flakes shellac’ which is the purified version of the ‘seed lac’. It does take a lot of labor, but it is possible to do the purification process at a small studio setting.
The seed lac comes at the most raw form from the field, therefore contains some bits of branches and dirt. While purifying you will ‘strain’ the material from all of those and get a pure version of 100% Lac.
You can use a cheese textile with natural fibre to do so. First it is recommended to melt down some ‘seed lac’ and rap it up in the cheese cloth. Make sure to roll it few time so it won't leak. The cloth will be the ‘stainer’ in the process.
You would need a heat source, like infra red radiator/ heat lamp and a setup where you can hang the cloth next to it. Place a baking paper under the cloth so when the pure lac drips it can start drying without sticking.
It is important to sing and squeeze the hanging cloth quite frequently, so the Lac won’t burn.
The pure Lac will drip slowly on the baking paper to be collected. You can let it dry and re-melt it to work with at any time.