We have long yearned for a colorful world since childhood. Even the words "colorful" and "colorful" are often used to describe fairyland.
This natural love of color makes many parents regard painting as their children's key hobby. Although few children really love painting, few children can resist the charm of a box of fine paint.
Lemon yellow, orange yellow, bright red, grass green, olive green, ripe brown, ochre, cobalt blue, ultramarine... these beautiful colors are like a touching rainbow, which unconsciously abducts the children's souls.
Sensitive people may find that the names of these colors are mostly descriptive words, such as grass green and rose red. However, there are some things like "ochre" that ordinary people can't understand.
If you know the history of some pigments, you will find that there are more such colors annihilated in the long river of time. Behind each color is a dusty story.
For a long time, human pigments could not depict one thousandth of this colorful world.
Every time a brand-new pigment appears, the color it shows is given a brand-new name.
The earliest pigments came from natural minerals, and most of them came from the soil produced in special areas.
Ochre powder with high iron content has long been used as a pigment, and the reddish brown it shows is also called ochre color.
As early as the fourth century BC, the ancient Egyptians had mastered the ability to make pigments. They know how to use natural minerals such as malachite, turquoise and cinnabar, grind them and wash them with water to improve the purity of the pigment.
At the same time, the ancient Egyptians also had excellent plant dye technology. This enabled ancient Egypt to draw a large number of colorful and bright murals.
For thousands of years, the development of human pigments has been driven by lucky discoveries. In order to improve the probability of this kind of luck, people have made many strange attempts and created a batch of wonderful pigments and dyes.
About 48 BC, Caesar the great saw a kind of ghost purple in Egypt, and he was fascinated almost instantly. He brought this color, called bone snail purple, back to Rome and made it the exclusive color of the Roman royal family.
Since then, purple has become a symbol of nobility. Therefore, later generations use the phrase "born in purple" to describe their family background. However, the production process of this kind of bone snail purple dye can be called a wonderful work.
Soak the rotten bone snail and wood ash in a bucket full of rotten urine. After a long time of standing, the viscous secretion of the gill gland of the bone snail will change and produce a substance called ammonium purpurite today, showing a blue purple color.
Structural formula of ammonium purpurite
The output of this method is very small. It can produce less than 15 ml of dye per 250000 bone snails, just enough to dye a Roman robe.
In addition, because the production process stinks, this dye can only be produced outside the city. Even the final ready-made clothes give off an indescribable unique flavor all the year round, perhaps it is "Royal flavor".
There are not many colors like bone snail purple. In the era when mummy powder was first famous as a medicine and then became popular as a pigment, another pigment that was also related to urine was invented.
It is a kind of beautiful and transparent yellow, which has been exposed to the wind and sun for a long time. It is called Indian yellow.
Bone snail for production of royal purple special dyeing
Raw material for Indian yellow
As its name implies, it is a mysterious pigment from India, which is said to be extracted from cow urine.
These cows were only fed mango leaves and water, resulting in severe malnutrition, and the urine contained special yellow substances.
Turner was ridiculed for being inspired by jaundice because he especially liked to use Indian yellow
These strange pigments and dyes dominated the art world for a long time. They not only do harm to people and animals, but also have low production and high prices. For example, in the Renaissance, the group cyan was made of lapis lazuli powder, and its price was five times higher than that of gold of the same quality.
With the explosive development of human science and technology, pigments also need a great revolution. However, this great revolution left a fatal wound.
Lead white is a rare color in the world that can leave a mark on different civilizations and regions. In the fourth century BC, the ancient Greeks had mastered the method of processing lead white.
Lead White
Usually, several lead bars are stacked in vinegar or animal feces and placed in a closed space for several months. The final basic lead carbonate is lead white.
The prepared lead white presents a completely opaque and thick color, which is considered to be one of the best pigments.
However, lead white is not only brilliant in paintings. Roman ladies, Japanese geisha and Chinese ladies all use lead white to smear their faces. While covering up the facial defects, they also get blackened skin, rotten teeth and smoke. At the same time, it will cause vasospasm, kidney damage, headache, vomiting, diarrhea, coma and other symptoms.
Originally, the dark skinned Queen Elizabeth suffered from lead poisoning
Similar symptoms also appear on painters. People often refer to the inexplicable pain on painters as "painter colic". But centuries have passed, and people have not realized that these strange phenomena actually come from their favorite colors.
The lead white on a woman's face can't be more suitable
Lead white also derived more colors in this pigment revolution.
Van Gogh's favorite chrome yellow is another lead compound, lead chromate. This yellow pigment is brighter than its disgusting Indian yellow, but it is cheaper.
Picture of Van Gogh
Like lead white, the lead contained in it easily enters the human body and disguises as calcium, leading to a series of diseases such as nervous system disorders.
The reason why Van Gogh, who loves chrome yellow and thick coating, has been suffering from mental illness for a long time is probably due to the "contribution" of chrome yellow.
Another product of the pigment revolution is not so "unknown" as lead white chrome yellow. It may start with Napoleon. After the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon announced his abdication, and the British exiled him to St. Helena. After spending less than six years on the island, Napoleon passed away strangely, and the reasons for his death are diverse.
According to the autopsy report of the British, Napoleon died of a serious stomach ulcer, but some studies found that Napoleon's hair contained a large amount of arsenic.
The arsenic content detected in several hair samples of different years was 10 to 100 times the normal amount. Therefore, some people believe that Napoleon was poisoned and framed to death.
But the truth of the matter is astonishing. The excessive arsenic in Napoleon's body actually comes from the green paint on the wallpaper.
More than 200 years ago, the famous Swedish scientist Scheler invented a bright green pigment. That kind of green will never be forgotten at a glance. It is far from being matched by those green pigments made of natural materials. This "Scheler green" caused a sensation once it was put into the market because of its low cost. It not only defeated many other green pigments, but also conquered the food market at one stroke.
It is said that some people used Scheler green to dye the food at the banquet, which directly led to the death of three guests. Shiller green is widely used by merchants in soap, cake decoration, toys, candy and clothing, and of course, wallpaper decoration. For a time, everything from art to daily necessities was surrounded by a lush green, including Napoleon's bedroom and bathroom.
This piece of wallpaper is said to have been taken from Napoleon's bedroom
The component of Scheler green is copper arsenite, in which the trivalent arsenic is highly toxic. Napoleon's exile had a humid climate and used Scheler green wallpaper, which released a large amount of arsenic. It is said that there will never be bedbugs in the green room, probably because of this reason. Coincidentally, Scheler green and later Paris green, which also contained arsenic, eventually became a pesticide. In addition, these arsenic containing chemical dyes were later used to treat syphilis, which to some extent inspired chemotherapy.
Paul Ellis, father of chemotherapy
Cupreouranite
After the ban of Scheler green, there was another more frightening green in vogue. When it comes to the production of this green raw material, modern people may immediately associate it with nuclear bombs and radiation, because it is uranium. Many people do not think that the natural form of uranium ore can be said to be gorgeous, known as the rose of the ore world.
The earliest uranium mining was also to add it to glass as a toner. The glass made in this way has a faint green light and is really beautiful.
Uranium glass flashing green under the ultraviolet lamp
Orange yellow uranium oxide powder
The oxide of uranium is bright orange red, which is also added to ceramic products as a toner. Before World War II, these "full of energy" uranium products were still everywhere. It was not until the rise of the nuclear industry that the United States began to restrict the civilian use of uranium. However, in 1958, the United States Atomic Energy Commission relaxed the restrictions, and depleted uranium reappeared in ceramic factories and glass factories.
From nature to extraction, from production to synthesis, the development history of pigments is also the development history of human chemical industry. All the wonderful things in this history are written in the names of those colors.
Bone snail purple, Indian yellow, Lead white, Chrome yellow, Scheler green, Uranium green, Uranium orange.
Each is the footprints left on the road of human civilization. Some are steady and steady, but some are not deep. Only by remembering these detours can we find a flatter straight road.
Post time: Oct-31-2021