I suspect you are referring to a different use of rosin and beeswax, but the mixture was used for centuries for sealing - which is for information security. It was mixed with either arsenic-based or copper-based minerals to both color it, and protect it from slow fungal attack, so seals (after about a century of colorful failures) were always red or green.
A slightly different proportion was used as "code" (no relation to cyphers), a shoemaker's waterproofing glue for seams. AFAIK no coloring was added.
Modern-day cables are armoured with polyethylene (which resists seawater rot far better than simple rubber), mylar, steel cables, aluminium, polycarbonate, and petroleum jelly.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutta-percha>
(James Burke's Connections, mentioned elsewhere in this thread, also describes this use and significance of gutta-percha.)
Cellophane/rayon/viscose is kind of a borderline case. The content of the finished polymer article is 100% natural cellulose, without even so much as a nitrate or acetate group affixed. But the process of dissolving that cellulose from plant matter so that you can form it into sheets or spin it into microfibers involves chemicals that are so nasty that nowadays they are used almost only for this purpose.
In my childhood (the 01990s, not the 01890s) ping-pong balls were still made of explosive celluloid. My father, who attended a mining college, demonstrated by dropping one onto an electric stove burner, not hot enough to glow visibly. It disappeared in a puff of flame. I was disappointed to discover recently that this is no longer the case for the ping-pong balls I found.