The first known artificial pigment was blue, created during the bronze age in ancient Egypt.
This colour was not simply dug from the ground and processed like earth tones.
It was manufactured by controlling heating of a precise mix comprising of silica, a copper compound, calcium carbonate and natron. The firing point necessary to chemically transform the mixture is a very narrow range between 1.472 and 1.652°F or 800 to 900°C. Accuracy is crucial or the process fails.
The recipe yields a glassy substance that could be pulverized into Egyptian blue sometimes called “blue frit” a crystalline pigment that still looks vivid on the wall painting thousands of years after they were created.
The secrets of its manufacturing process died out with the Romans, who imported it for their own artistic practice and who left the only known written record about its technical make up. Egyptian blue was revived in the early 19th century, with the excavation in 1814 and subsequent study of a blue vessel from Pompeii. In the 1800’s chemists established the pigments chemical composition and a recipe for its manufacture known as “Pompeian Blue” it is still available to artists today with the same chemical composition as the ancient Egyptian material.
CHROMAPHILIA The Story of Color in Art.
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