Cobalt blue
Cobalt blue in impure forms had long been used in Chinese porcelain, but it was independently discovered as a pure alumina-based pigment by Louis Jacques Thénard in 1802. Commercial production began in France in 1807. The first recorded use of "cobalt blue" as a color name in English was in 1777. The leading world manufacturer of cobalt blue in the 19th century was Benjamin Wegner's Norwegian company Blaafarveværket ("blue colour works" in Dano-Norwegian). Germany was also famous for production, especially the blue colour works ("Blaufarbenwerke") in the Ore Mountains of Saxony.
Egyptian blue
The term for it in the Egyptian language is "ḫsbḏ-ỉrjt", which means artificial lapis lazuli ("ḫsbḏ"). It was used in antiquity as a blue pigment to color a variety of different media such as stone, wood, plaster, papyrus, and canvas, and in the production of numerous objects, including cylinder seals, beads, scarabs, inlays, pots, and statuettes. It is also sometimes referred to in Egyptological literature as blue frit. Some have argued that this is an erroneous term that should be reserved for use to describe the initial phase of glass or glaze production, while others argue that Egyptian blue is a frit in both the fine and coarse form since it is a product of solid state reaction. Its characteristic blue color, resulting from one of its main components—copper—ranges from a light to a dark hue, depending on differential processing and composition.