Color is a Color has fascinated humans for 20,000 years, dating all the way back to the early cave paintings. But not only the cavemen culture gave colors symbolism and meaning. One of the most fascinating histories involving color is that during every age and region, dyes and pigments have been produced depending on available resources.
It is believed that the Chinese were the first to manufacture and perfect color usage tens of thousands of years ago. They also believed in Color Healing and recorded color "diagnoses" through a 2,000-year-old Chinese chronicle called, "The Nei/ching."
Egypt is emerging region known for its use of color. Modern systems for
recycling paint is inspired by the effective achievements of the Egyptians. Ancient Egyptians believed that color had magical healing powers. Before early cave paintings that were made using iron oxides, the ancient Egyptians developed paints from pigments in the soil, which were yellow, orange, and red.
Prior to the 19th century, the term, "paint," was only applied to the oil-bound kinds; the kinds bound with glue were called "distemper." By 1,000 BC, the development of paints and varnishes from acacia tree gum or, gum Arabic was developed. During this period, ochers, umbers, and blacks were easily obtainable, and new colors were also being discovered.
Around 1500 BC in Greece and Crete, painting became known as an art form. It was during this time that the Romans acquired Egyptian color skills. The Romans created the color purple, made using a pound of royal purple dye that required the crushing of 4,000,000 mollusks. The Egyptians created the first new color during this period, known as "Egyptian Blue."
"Naples Yellow" burst onto the color scene around 500 BC. To make Genuine Indian Yellow, it had to be sent to London for purification after mixing mud with concentrated cow urine. Sap Green came from the Blackthorn berry, and Sepia Brown from the dried ink sac of squid.
The discovery of mixing two colors together and creating a third was made by Plato. This then changes the manufacture of the color.
Even though color was an obviously important and at times, religious aspect in many cultures, none of these groups named very many colors. In the 1960s, two anthropologists conducted an international study of color naming. Often times, many languages would only have two color terms, meaning white light and black dark. These anthropologists studied 98 languages, and discovered that the largest number of basic color terms were in English, in which we have eleven: white, black, red, yellow, green, orange, blue, pink, purple, grey, and brown. The other millions of color names are "borrowed;" i.e., grape, peach, gold, avocado, tan, watermelon, etc.
Binder, which is what paint is comprised of, holds the paint together. Appropriate thinners make paint easy to apply. The first synthetic pigment was produced by the Egyptians 5,000 years ago from grinded down blue grass – it was called "Blue Frit."
Prior to the 16th century, pigment color greatly depending on dyestuffs, which could be grown in or were indigenous to Europe and similar temperate regions. From 1550 – 1850, only the "natural" dyestuffs were available, but the range of dyestuffs was extended with tropical dyestuffs from Central America, India, etc.
Between 600 BC – AD 400, the Romans and Greeks produced varnishes. And in another culture across the world, red dye was considered more valuable than gold. The culture was the Aztec civilization, and they practiced Color Healing as well.
"Cochineal red" was discovered by the Aztecs and made using the female cochineal beetle. A million insects were needed to make one pound of water-soluble extract. The Spaniards introduced red to Europe in the 16th century.
"Red lead" was discovered by accident around 2500. Demand for white lead increased, and while it occurs naturally, the demand brought about manmade reproductions Vitruvius, a Roman writer, architect, and engineer, describes what white lead production was like in the 2nd century AD. By the 17th century, the Dutch exponentially increased white lead availability and lowered the cost by inventing the "Stack Process," a chemical process that casts metallic lead as thin buckles, stacks them up and leaves them for four to sixteen weeks, which turns the blue-grey lead to white lead all white lead paints have chalk in their undercoats; purer white lead is reserved for finish coats.
Henry Perkins discovered the first real synthetic dye, "Mauveine," in 1856. This brought about the revelation that many dyes could be made synthetically and inexpensively. Linseed oil and pigment-grade zinc oxide or, white paint began being produced from that point on.
The first washable paint was produced using cast-iron paint mills and zinc-based pigments in the 1870's, and it was called "Charlton White." D.R. Averill of Ohio patented the first ready-mixed paint in 1867, but it didn't quite catch on.
For ten years, Sherwin Williams tried to perfect a formula in which fine paint particles would remain suspended in linseed oil. They succeeded in 1880 when they developed a formula that greatly exceeded the quality of all available paints during that point in time. Emulsions based on similar formula were then produced and marketed as "oil bound distempers." The new paints became available in tins that same year, in a wide array of colors and were exported all over the world.
In this day and age, we have thousands of colors available to us. Colors and their history have never been more timely or fascinating.