Pigments & Dyes

• Dyes & Pigments

  Derived from natural sources and are organic; they can come from insects, animals, plants, trees, or inorganic clays and minerals. These colorants can impart color to yarn, textile, and surfaces
• Pigments


  Finely ground, colored powders that remain suspended and insoluble. They can be combined with a binder or vehicle such as animal fat, plant gum, oil, egg white or yolk, or honey
• Red & Yellow Iron Oxide/Ocher


  • Abundant in earth; these supplied colors in prehistoric cave paintings
• Charred Bones

  • Used for the black pigments in prehistoric cave paintings
• Lapis Lazuli


  • The rare semiprecious gemstone in Afghanistan, which was powdered to produce ultramarine (meaning "beyond the sea") blue. It was popularly used in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia
• Azurite & Malachite


  • Copper mineral sources of blue and green, respectively. These made up for the shortage of lapis lazuli
• Fresco


  The technique of painting on wet plaster. Used as early as the Minoan civilization at Knossos Palace on Crete
• Vermillion


  • An orangish red pigment with excellent hiding power and good permanence. A brilliant scarlet red which is made from cinnabar, a sulfide of mercury mined at Almaden, Spain
• Terre Verte


  • A soft green color and was also known as Verona Green as it was mined near Verona, Italy. It is a transparent pigment with a low tinting strength perfect for mixing flesh tones
• Raw Sienna


  • It is named after the Tuscan city and is a dark yellow but turns reddish brown when heated or "burnt"
• Umber


  • Its name is derived from the word shade. It originates from the hilly central region of Umbria. A natural mixture of iron and manganese oxides and hydroxides. It is a dark brown (because of its higher Manganese content) which is commonly burnt as well
• Fresco secco


  The technique of painting on dry plaster with pigments mixed in water. Also known as dry fresco
• Buon fresco


  True or wet fresco; its pigments are mixed with water and become chemically bound to the freshly laid lime plaster. It is painting executed on a freshly plastered wall
• Dyes


  A natural or synthetic compound that is used to impart color to another material like yarn, textile, and other surfaces
• Madder, Weld, & Woad


  • These are plants which were the earliest known dyes
• Murex snail


  • Mediterranean sea snail whose shell contained glands that produced purple dye used to make expensive cloth. These were only reserved for the emperors of Rome to use. Also known as purpura
• Kermes


  • An insect which produces scarlet, a brilliant red color, from its unlaid eggs. These looked like berries which clung on to trees and shrubs
• Italy was the leading center for the production of expensive silk and dyes during the Middle Ages
• Mordants


  Chemical compounds that bonded the dye to the fabric. Most plants require this chemical to create brighter, more permanent colors, and sources ranged from mineral salts to acidic compounds
• Alum Mordant


  • It is a common mordant, chemical compound of aluminum, sulfate and potassium
• Alchemy


  Medieval chemical philosophy based on changing metal into gold. Part magic and part chemistry, it was an ancient art that evolved from metalwork. It was passed down by Arab scholars, influenced by the Greek philosophy and then filtered through Europe in the twelfth century
• Indigo


  • It is one of the oldest plant dyes, and one that yields a deep, strong blue. It was brought form Asia to Europe by Venetian and Genoese traders. It is more expensive than woad and required no mordant. It produced a richer, more durable color with a smaller quantity of dye
• Scarlet


  • A brilliant red color which originated from the Kermes insect
• Cochineal


  • It is a parasite, one that attaches itself to the cactus plants; for centuries, it had been a source of red dye for the native Indians of Mexico and central America. It produces carmine or crimson lake, a bright red color
• Cassius purple


  • A blue-red that was named after the alchemist who discovered it. It can be used in coloring glass and porcelain
• Prussian blue


  • Also known as Berlin blue, it is a dark blue pigment produced by oxidation of ferrous ferrocyanide salts. It was made by Johann Konrad Dippel and Diesbach. They used tainted potassium to mix red and accidentally discovered this deep blue
• Aniline


  • Discovered by German chemist Otto Unverdorben, it is a dye which comes from distilling liquid from the indigo plant
• Mauve


  • Discovered in 1856 by William Henry Perkin in an attempt to synthesize quinine while using coal tar. He created the first aniline dye purple
• Magenta


  • Discovered by Perkin's teacher, August Wilhelm von Hoffman in 1858
• Fuchsia


  • A vivid purplish-red color like that of the sepals of a typical fuchsia flower. The flower took its name from from a 16th-century German botanist Leonhart Fuchs
• Vehicle


  A liquid, paste, wax, or other substance that holds particles of pigments (dyes or other colorants) together without dissolving them and act as a binder that adheres the pigments to the painted surface
• Fugitive pigment


  The tendency for pigment to change color under natural influences (light, heat, water)
• Color fastness


  Having color that retains its original hue without fading or running
• Vanta black


  • Is a brand name for a class of super-black coatings with total hemispherical reflectances (THR) below 1.5% in the visible spectrum
• Dyestuff


  A substance that yields a dye or that can be used as a dye, especially when in solution
• Azo dyes


  A large group of synthetic petroleum based dyes with greater color features prescribed by aniline dye
• Verdigris

  • A moderately-transparent bluish green with low stability. It's a copper acetate, used often, from antiquity through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque
• Carbon Black


  • A black was used as a pigment since very earliest times. Made by heating wood, or other plant material, with a very restricted air supply. Sticks of charcoal have been used for sketching by artists of all periods, and traces of their work may be found on the ground layer of paintings
• Lead White


  • Has the warmest masstone of all the whites. It has a very subtle reddish-yellow undertone. Is a carbonate of lead which was in use since antiquity and was prepared from metallic lead and vinegar
• Egyptian blue


  • Very stable synthetical pigment of varying blue colour. It is a copper calcium silicate that was the first synthetic pigment and the most extensively used from the early dynasties in Egypt until the end of the Roman period in Europe