When was cobalt first used for blue paint?
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.
Tekhelet
Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog (1889–1959) obtained a sample of this dye and had it chemically analyzed. The chemists concluded that it was a well-known synthetic dye "Prussian blue" made by reacting Iron(II) sulfate with an organic material. In this case, the cuttlefish only supplied the organic material which could have as easily been supplied from a vast array of organic sources (e. g., ox blood). R. Herzog thus rejected the cuttlefish as the "Ḥillazon" and some suggest that had the Grand Rabbi Gershon Henoch Leiner known this fact, he too would have rejected it based on his explicit criterion that the blue color must come from the animal and that all other additives are permitted solely to aid the color in adhering to the wool.
Yellow
The painter Vincent van Gogh was a particular admirer of the color yellow, the color of sunshine. Writing to his sister from the south of France in 1888, he wrote, "Now we are having beautiful warm, windless weather that is very beneficial to me. The sun, a light that for lack of a better word I can only call yellow, bright sulfur yellow, pale lemon gold. How beautiful yellow is!" In Arles, Van Gogh painted sunflowers inside a small house he rented at 2 Place Lamartine, a house painted with a color that Van Gogh described as "buttery yellow." Van Gogh was one of the first artists to use commercially manufactured paints, rather than paints he made himself. He used the traditional yellow ochre, but also chrome yellow, first made in 1809, and cadmium yellow, first made in 1820.
Green
Mixtures of oxidized cobalt and zinc were also used to create green paints as early as the 18th century.
Lead-tin-yellow
The origin of lead-tin-yellow can be dated back to at least the thirteenth century when Type II was applied in frescos, perhaps having been discovered as a by-product of crystal glass production. Until the eighteenth century Type I was the standard yellow used in oil painting. It was then almost completely replaced in use by Naples yellow. After 1750, no paintings seem to have been made containing the pigment. In the nineteenth century its existence had been forgotten and its application was only in 1941 rediscovered by the German scientist Richard Jakobi, the director of the Doerner Institute. That it faded from collective memory has been explained by a confusion with massicot, the name of which was also applied to lead-tin-yellow. The term "lead-tin-yellow", a literal translation of German "Blei-Zinn-Gelb", is therefore a modern designation, not the historical name of the pigment. In English it used to be called "general" after the Italian "giallorino". After 1967, Hermann Kühn in a series of studies proved its general use in the traditional oil technique of earlier centuries, coining the distinction between the Type I and Type II varieties.
Violet budgerigar mutation
In Europe, the first mention of a bird which might have been a visual violet was by C af Enehjelm in 1935 in Copenhagen. In a letter to the Budgerigar Bulletin,
he said he had bred a Cobalt, "which I would call violet". In a later article
he gave full details of his violet birds, remarking that earlier birds he had seen which were bred in Germany in the late 1920s and marketed as violets were little different from normal Cobalts and lost their violet colour with age. His first true violet, mentioned above, was bred from an apparent dark green/blue cock obtained from a friend and a cobalt hen. This dark Green/blue cock was "very heavily suffused with blue (cobalt)". Presumably, it was in fact a SF Violet Light Green/blue.
He went on to breed several more Violets from the progeny of this bird.
Jasperware
The earliest jasper was stained throughout, which is known as "solid," but before long most items were coloured only on the surface; these are known as "dipped" or "dip". Dipping was first used in 1777, Wedgwood writing that "the Cobalt @ 36s. per lb, which being too dear to mix with the clay of the whole grounds". By 1829 production in jasper had virtually ceased, but in 1844 production resumed making dipped wares. Solid jasper was not manufactured again until 1860. Early dark blue was often made by dipping a body made from the solid light blue. In the best early pieces the relief work was gone over, including some undercutting, by lapidaries.
White
White was one of the first colors used in art. The Lascaux Cave in France contains drawings of bulls and other animals drawn by paleolithic artists between 18,000 and 17,000 years ago. Paleolithic artists used calcite or chalk, sometimes as a background, sometimes as a highlight, along with charcoal and red and yellow ochre in their vivid cave paintings.
In ancient Egypt, white was connected with the goddess Isis. The priests and priestesses of Isis dressed only in white linen, and it was used to wrap mummies.
Electrochromic devices
The history of coloration goes back to 1704 when Diesbach discovered Prussian blue (hexacyanoferrate), which changes the color from transparent to blue under oxidation of iron. In the 1930s, Kobosew and Nekrassow first noted electrochemical coloration in bulk tungsten oxide. While working at Balzers in Lichtenstein, T. Kraus provided a detailed description of electrochemical coloration in thin film of tungsten trioxide (WO) on 30 July 1953. In 1969, S. K. Deb demonstrated electrochromic coloration in WO thin films. Deb observed electrochromic color by applying electric field of the order of 10 Vcm across WO thin film. In fact, the real birth of the EC technology is usually attributed to S. K. Deb’s seminal paper of 1973, wherein he described the coloration mechanism in WO. The electrochromism occurs due to the electrochemical redox reactions that take place in electrochromic materials. Various types of materials and structures can be used to construct electrochromic devices, depending on the specific applications.
Benjamin Wegner
In 1821, Modums Blaafarveværk in Norway, the world's leading producer of cobalt blue, was announced for sale. The former royal company had been pledged by the king as security for a loan during the Napoleonic Wars and taken over by the bankruptcy estate of the Swedish businessman Peter Wilhelm Berg when the state could not redeem the pledge. Edward Solly wanted to buy the company and send Wegner as his representative to complete the transaction, but as he had financial problems, the plans had to be canceled. However, in 1822, Wegner was sent by his business associate Wilhelm Christian Benecke to evaluate the profitability of the enterprise and with authorization to buy the company on Benecke's behalf if he found the company to be profitable. Wegner subsequently bought the company at a public auction on behalf of an investment group of which Benecke was the prime investor.
Cadmium pigments
Cadmium compounds are utilized in coloring borosilicate glass used by artists in lampworking. The palette is often referred to as 'cadmium colors' or 'cadmium based colors' and is marked by uniquely bright and saturated tones not found in other colored glass. Cadmium pigments used in borosilicate have a relatively short history, with the first commercial formulations hitting the market in 2000 under the name 'Crayon Colors' by Henry Grimmett of Glass Alchemy.
Alderley Edge Mines
The cobalt mining rights on Alderley Edge were leased by Sir John Stanley to a Yorkshire company for an annual rent of £1,000 in 1807. By early 1808, Tomlinson and Company of the Ferrybridge Pottery were leasing the mines at an annual rent of £2,000 plus a £400 share for Lord Stanley. The ore extracted was taken in tubs to Ferrybridge where it was made into cobalt glass, or smalt, a blue pigment used in the pottery industry and for whitening laundry.
Dark budgerigar mutation
The first Cobalts were bred by Mon. Blanchard in 1920, and by George F Hedges in 1923 while he was the aviary attendant for Madame Lecallier in France. These were initially called "Powder Blues". Some of these latter Cobalts were purchased by Mrs Dalton Burgess and imported to England. She exhibited one (as a "Royal Blue") in February 1924 at the Crystal Palace and later that year bred the first Mauves from them. She called the Mauves "French Greys" in nest feather, and when adult they were known as "Lilacs" or "Lavenders".
Scarlet (color)
From the 8th century until the early 20th century, the most important scarlet pigment used in western art was vermilion, made from the mineral cinnabar. It was used, along with red lake pigments, by artists from Botticelli and Raphael to Renoir. However, in 1919 commercial production began of an intense new synthetic pigment, cadmium red. made from cadmium sulfide and selenium. The new pigment became the standard red of Henri Matisse and the other important painters of the 20th century.
Methylene blue
Methylene blue, also known as methylthioninium chloride, is a medication and dye. As a medication, it is mainly used to treat methemoglobinemia. Specifically, it is used to treat methemoglobin levels that are greater than 30% or in which there are symptoms despite oxygen therapy. It has previously been used for cyanide poisoning and urinary tract infections, but this use is no longer recommended. It is typically given by injection into a vein.
Common side effects include headache, vomiting, confusion, shortness of breath, and high blood pressure. Other side effects include serotonin syndrome, red blood cell breakdown, and allergic reactions. Use often turns the urine, sweat, and stool blue to green in color. While use during pregnancy may harm the baby, not using it in methemoglobinemia is likely more dangerous. Methylene blue is a thiazine dye. It works by converting the ferric iron in hemoglobin to ferrous iron.
Methylene blue was first prepared in 1876 by Heinrich Caro. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the most effective and safe medicines needed in a health system. In the United States, a 50 mg vial costs about 191.40 USD. In the United Kingdom, a 50 mg vial costs the NHS about £39.38.
Biofouling
With the rise of iron hulls in the 19th century, copper sheathing could no longer be used due to its galvanic corrosive interaction with iron. Anti-fouling paints were tried, and in 1860, the first practical paint to gain widespread use was introduced in Liverpool and was referred to as "McIness" hot plastic paint. These treatments had a short service life, were expensive, and relatively ineffective by modern standards.
Blue
Blue was a latecomer among colours used in art and decoration, as well as language and literature. Reds, blacks, browns, and ochres are found in cave paintings from the Upper Paleolithic period, but not blue. Blue was also not used for dyeing fabric until long after red, ochre, pink and purple. This is probably due to the perennial difficulty of making good blue dyes and pigments. The earliest known blue dyes were made from plants – woad in Europe, indigo in Asia and Africa, while blue pigments were made from minerals, usually either lapis lazuli or azurite.
Shigeko Kubota
"Vagina Painting" was performed at the Perpetual Fluxus Festival in New York in July 1965. In the performance, Kubota assumed a crouching position over a sheet of paper on the floor with a brush affixed to the crotch of her underwear and painted abstract lines in blood red paint. The work is often cited as a female rejoinder to Jackson Pollock's action or drip paintings and to Yves Klein's use of the female body as a painting tool in his "Anthropometrics of the Blue Period" (1960) in which female models covered in blue paint imprinted their bodies in white paper on a floor. The red paint is reminiscent of menstrual blood, but also can be juxtaposed with Jackson Pollock's ejaculatory motion of his paintings. Kubota placed the paintbrush at the site of phallic lack, which breaks into a new type of female empowerment. The strokes of the paintbrush recall calligraphy, a reference to her cultural heritage. The work has been associated with feminist art, although Kubota never publicly expressed if she considered the work feminist or not.
Black
Black was one of the first colors used in art. The Lascaux Cave in France contains drawings of bulls and other animals drawn by paleolithic artists between 18,000 and 17,000 years ago. They began by using charcoal, and then made more vivid black pigments by burning bones or grinding a powder of manganese oxide.
Potassium cobaltinitrite
The compound was first described in 1848 by Nikolaus Wolfgang Fischer in Breslau, and it is used as a yellow pigment called Aureolin.
International Klein Blue
Although Klein had worked with blue extensively in his earlier career, it was not until 1958 that he used it as the central component of a piece (the color effectively becoming the art). Klein embarked on a series of monochromatic works using IKB as the central theme. These included performance art where Klein painted models' naked bodies and had them walk, roll and sprawl upon blank canvases as well as more conventional single-color canvases. Six sculptures by Klein in the Musiktheater im Revier, Gelsenkirchen, Germany, are executed in IKB.
Cobalt blue
Art
Automobiles
Construction
Sports
Vexillology
Video games
Orange (colour)
In 1797 a French scientist Louis Vauquelin discovered the mineral crocoite, or lead chromate, which led in 1809 to the invention of the synthetic pigment chrome orange. Other synthetic pigments, cobalt red, cobalt yellow, and cobalt orange, the last made from cadmium sulfide plus cadmium selenide, soon followed. These new pigments, plus the invention of the metal paint tube in 1841, made it possible for artists to paint outdoors and to capture the colours of natural light.
Cobalt glass
Cobalt glass—known as "smalt" when ground as a pigment—is a deep blue colored glass prepared by including a cobalt compound, typically cobalt oxide or cobalt carbonate, in a glass melt. Cobalt is a very intense glass colorant and very little is required to show a noticeable amount of color. Cobalt blue glass is also used as an optical filter in flame tests to filter out the yellow flame caused by contamination with sodium, and expand the ability to see violet and blue hues.
Cornelis Drebbel
The story goes that, while making a coloured liquid for a thermometer Cornelis dropped a flask of aqua regia on a tin window sill, and discovered that stannous chloride makes the colour of carmine much brighter and more durable. Although Cornelis did not make much money from his work, his daughters Anna and Catharina and his sons-in-law Abraham and Johannes Sibertus Kuffler set up a very successful dye works.
One was set up in 1643 in Bow, London, and the resulting colour was called bow dye.
The recipe for "colour Kufflerianus" was kept a family secret, and the new bright red colour was very popular in Europe.
Purple
Cobalt violet is a synthetic pigment that was invented in the second half of the 19th century, and is made by a similar process as cobalt blue, cerulean blue and cobalt green. It is the violet pigment most commonly used today by artists.
Cobalt
Before the 19th century, cobalt was predominantly used as a pigment. It has been used since the Middle Ages to make smalt, a blue-colored glass. Smalt is produced by melting a mixture of roasted mineral smaltite, quartz and potassium carbonate, which yields a dark blue silicate glass, which is finely ground after the production. Smalt was widely used to color glass and as pigment for paintings. In 1780, Sven Rinman discovered cobalt green, and in 1802 Louis Jacques Thénard discovered cobalt blue. Cobalt pigments such as cobalt blue (cobalt aluminate), cerulean blue (cobalt(II) stannate), various hues of cobalt green (a mixture of cobalt(II) oxide and zinc oxide), and cobalt violet (cobalt phosphate) are used as artist's pigments because of their superior chromatic stability. Aureolin (cobalt yellow) is now largely replaced by more lightfast yellow pigments.
Cobalt
Alfred Werner, a Nobel-prize winning pioneer in coordination chemistry, worked with compounds of empirical formula [Co(NH)]Cl. One of the isomers determined was cobalt(III) hexammine chloride. This coordination complex, a typical Werner-type complex, consists of a central cobalt atom coordinated by six ammine orthogonal ligands and three chloride counteranions. Using chelating ethylenediamine ligands in place of ammonia gives tris(ethylenediamine)cobalt(III) chloride ([Co(en)]Cl), which was one of the first coordination complexes to be resolved into optical isomers. The complex exists in the right- and left-handed forms of a "three-bladed propeller". This complex was first isolated by Werner as yellow-gold needle-like crystals.
Pigment
Prussian blue was the first modern synthetic pigment, discovered by accident in 1704. By the early 19th century, synthetic and metallic blue pigments had been added to the range of blues, including French ultramarine, a synthetic form of lapis lazuli, and the various forms of Cobalt and Cerulean blue. In the early 20th century, organic chemistry added Phthalo Blue, a synthetic, organometallic pigment with overwhelming tinting power.
Cobalt
Swedish chemist Georg Brandt (1694–1768) is credited with discovering cobalt circa 1735, showing it to be a previously unknown element, different from bismuth and other traditional metals. Brandt called it a new "semi-metal". He showed that compounds of cobalt metal were the source of the blue color in glass, which previously had been attributed to the bismuth found with cobalt. Cobalt became the first metal to be discovered since the pre-historical period. All other known metals (iron, copper, silver, gold, zinc, mercury, tin, lead and bismuth) had no recorded discoverers.
YInMn Blue
The pigment is noteworthy for its vibrant, near-perfect blue color and unusually high NIR reflectance. The color can be adjusted by varying the In/Mn ratio, but the bluest pigment, , has a color comparable to standard cobalt blue pigments.
In June 2016, Australian company Derivan published experiments using (known as Oregon Blue, and also Yin Min Blue) within their artist range (Matisse acrylics). This experimental product was made using the Shepherd licensed pigment.
YInMn Blue is chemically stable, does not fade, and is non-toxic. Moreover, infrared radiation is strongly reflected, which makes this pigment suitable for energy-saving cool coatings. It can be prepared by heating the oxides of the elements yttrium, indium, and manganese to a temperature of approximately .
Cobalt(II) carbonate
Cobalt carbonate is a precursor to cobalt carbonyl and various cobalt salts. It is a component of dietary supplements since cobalt is an essential element. It is a precursor to blue pottery glazes, famously in the case of Delftware.
Islamic pottery
The Islamic market was apparently especially important in the early years of Chinese blue and white porcelain, which appears to have been mainly exported until the Ming. Again, large dishes were an export style, and the densely painted decoration of Yuan blue and white borrowed heavily from the arabesques and plant scrolls of Islamic decoration, probably mostly taking the style from metalwork examples, which also provided shapes for some vessels. This style of ornament was then confined to blue and white, and is not found in the red and white painted wares then preferred by the Chinese themselves. The cobalt blue that was used was itself imported from Persia, and the export trade in porcelain was handled by colonies of Muslim merchants in Quanzhou, convenient for the huge Jingdezhen potteries, and other ports to the south.
Bristol blue glass
During the late 18th century Richard Champion, a Bristol merchant and potter, making porcelain, was working with a chemist, William Cookworthy. Cookworthy began a search for good quality cobalt oxide to give the blue glaze decoration on the white porcelain and obtained exclusive import rights to all the cobalt oxide from the Royal Saxon Cobalt Works in Saxony. It is uncertain when Bristol blue glass was first made but the quality and beauty of the glass swiftly gained popularity, with seventeen glass houses being set up in the city.
Monochrome painting
The next exhibition, 'Proposte Monochrome, Epoca Blu' (Proposition Monochrome; Blue Epoch) at the Gallery Apollinaire, Milan, (January 1957), featured 11 identical blue canvases, using ultramarine pigment suspended in a synthetic resin 'Rhodopas'. Discovered with the help of Edouard Adam, a Parisian paint dealer, the effect was to retain the brilliance of the pigment which tended to become dull when suspended in linseed oil. Klein later patented this recipe to maintain the "authenticity of the pure idea." This colour, reminiscent of the lapis lazuli used to paint the Madonna's robes in medieval paintings, was to become famous as 'International Klein Blue' (IKB). The paintings were attached to poles placed 20 cm away from the walls to increase their spatial ambiguities.
History of chemistry
In 1702, German chemist Georg Stahl coined the name "phlogiston" for the substance believed to be released in the process of burning. Around 1735, Swedish chemist Georg Brandt analyzed a dark blue pigment found in copper ore. Brandt demonstrated that the pigment contained a new element, later named cobalt. In 1751, a Swedish chemist and pupil of Stahl's named Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, identified an impurity in copper ore as a separate metallic element, which he named nickel. Cronstedt is one of the founders of modern mineralogy. Cronstedt also discovered the mineral scheelite in 1751, which he named tungsten, meaning "heavy stone" in Swedish.
Cobalt
Four dihalides of cobalt(II) are known: cobalt(II) fluoride (CoF, pink), cobalt(II) chloride (CoCl, blue), cobalt(II) bromide (CoBr, green), cobalt(II) iodide (CoI, blue-black). These halides exist in anhydrous and hydrated forms. Whereas the anhydrous dichloride is blue, the hydrate is red.
William Murdoch
Apart from the benefits of gas lighting and heating, the process for producing coal gas yielded a number of other substances which were subsequently successfully exploited. Among these were coke; ammonia; phenol (carbolic acid), a disinfectant and one of the components of bakelite, the first synthetic plastic invented in 1910; and coal tar, which contained a number of organic chemicals. Coal tar was subsequently used to produce the first synthetic dye, mauve, by William Henry Perkin in 1856 and in 1853 was found, by Charles Gerhardt to contain the chemical acetylsalicylic acid, now known as aspirin.
Yves Klein
The next exhibition, 'Proposte Monocrome, Epoca Blu' (Proposition Monochrome; Blue Epoch) at the Gallery Apollinaire, Milan, (January 1957), featured 11 identical blue canvases, using ultramarine pigment suspended in a synthetic resin 'Rhodopas', described by Klein as "The Medium". Discovered with the help of Edouard Adam, a Parisian paint dealer, the optical effect retained the brilliance of the pigment which, when suspended in linseed oil, tended to become dull. Klein later deposited a Soleau envelope for this recipe to maintain the "authenticity of the pure idea." This colour, reminiscent of the lapis lazuli used to paint the Madonna's robes in medieval paintings, was to become known as International Klein Blue (IKB). The paintings were attached to poles placed 20 cm away from the walls to increase their spatial ambiguities.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
There are economic and strategic incentives to bring more security to the Congo, which is rich in natural resources such as cobalt, a strategic and critical metal used in many industrial and military applications. The largest use of cobalt is in superalloys, used to make jet engine parts. Cobalt is also used in magnetic alloys and in cutting and wear-resistant materials such as cemented carbides. The chemical industry consumes significant quantities of cobalt in a variety of applications including catalysts for petroleum and chemical processing; drying agents for paints and inks; ground coats for porcelain enamels; decolourisers for ceramics and glass; and pigments for ceramics, paints, and plastics. The country contains 80% of the world's cobalt reserves.
Cobalt
Common oxidation states of cobalt include +2 and +3, although compounds with oxidation states ranging from −3 to +5 are also known. A common oxidation state for simple compounds is +2 (cobalt(II)). These salts form the pink-colored metal aquo complex [Co(HO)] in water. Addition of chloride gives the intensely blue . In a borax bead flame test, cobalt shows deep blue in both oxidizing and reducing flames.
Emergency vehicle lighting
The use of the blue emergency light originates in Germany during World War II. As a result of the ‘Verdunkelung’, a measure for aerial defense from 1935, cobalt blue was regulated to replace the red color used until 1938 in emergency vehicle lights. Due to the scattering properties of the blue color, it is only visible to lower altitudes and is therefore less easily spotted by enemy airplanes.
Blue
Another important influence on painting in the 19th century was the theory of complementary colours, developed by the French chemist Michel Eugene Chevreul in 1828 and published in 1839. He demonstrated that placing complementary colours, such as blue and yellow-orange or ultramarine and yellow, next to each other heightened the intensity of each colour "to the apogee of their tonality." In 1879 an American physicist, Ogden Rood, published a book charting the complementary colours of each colour in the spectrum. This principle of painting was used by Claude Monet in his "Impression – Sunrise – Fog" (1872), where he put a vivid blue next to a bright orange sun, (1872) and in "Régate à Argenteuil" (1872), where he painted an orange sun against blue water. The colours brighten each other. Renoir used the same contrast of cobalt blue water and an orange sun in "Canotage sur la Seine" (1879–1880). Both Monet and Renoir liked to use pure colours, without any blending.
Blue and white pottery
The origin of this decorative style is thought to lie in Iraq, when craftsmen in Basra sought to imitate imported white Chinese stoneware with their own tin-glazed, white pottery and added decorative motifs in blue glazes that had been developed by preexisting Mesopotamian cultures. Such Abbasid-era "blue and white" pieces have been found in present-day Iraq dating to the 9th century A.D., decades after the opening of a direct sea route from Iraq to China. Later, in China, a style of decoration based on sinuous plant forms spreading across the object was perfected and most commonly used. Blue and white decoration first became widely used in Chinese porcelain in the 14th century, after the cobalt pigment for the blue began to be imported from Persia. It was widely exported, and inspired imitative wares in Islamic ceramics, and in Japan, and later European tin-glazed earthenware such as Delftware and after the techniques were discovered in the 18th century, European porcelain. Blue and white pottery in all of these traditions continues to be produced, most of it copying earlier styles.
Claude Louis Berthollet
He also carried out research into dyes and bleaches, being first to introduce the use of chlorine gas as a commercial bleach in 1785. He first produced a modern bleaching liquid in 1789 in his laboratory on the quay Javel in Paris, France, by passing chlorine gas through a solution of sodium carbonate. The resulting liquid, known as ""Eau de Javel"" ("Javel water"), was a weak solution of sodium hypochlorite. Another strong chlorine oxidant and bleach which he investigated and was the first to produce, potassium chlorate (KClO), is known as "Berthollet's Salt".
Blue
Other famous white and blue patterns appeared in Delft, Meissen, Staffordshire, and Saint Petersburg, Russia.
While blue was an expensive and prestigious colour in European painting, it became a common colour for clothing during the Renaissance. The rise of the colour blue in fashion in the 12th and 13th centuries led to a blue dye industry in several cities, notably Amiens, Toulouse, and Erfurt. They made a dye called pastel from woad, a plant common in Europe, which had been used to make blue dye by the Celts and German tribes. Blue became a colour worn by domestics and artisans, not just nobles. In 1570, when Pope Pius V listed the colours that could be used for ecclesiastical dress and for altar decoration, he excluded blue, because he considered it too common.
Cobalt glass
The process used for producing cobalt smalt glass at the Blaafarveværket industrial manufacturing center in Norway in the 19th century has been documented as smelting cobalt oxide together with quartz and potassium carbonate. The result was an intensive blue glass-like substance that was ground and sold to producers of glassware and porcelain.
Litmus
Litmus was used for the first time about 1300 AD by Spanish physician Arnaldus de Villa Nova. From the 16th century on, the blue dye was extracted from some lichens, especially in the Netherlands.
Ceramic colorants
Cobalt is commonly used in either its carbonate (CoCO) or its oxide (CoO) forms. In the presence of most fluxes, it yields blue colors ranging from low saturation pastels to high saturation midnight blues in both oxidation and reduction atmospheres. However, in the presence of magnesium, cobalt can become purple, pink or reddish blue depending on whether it was fired in oxidation (yields purple) or reduction. Cobalt is also commonly used in black glazes and in washes as decorative medium. Common saturation percentages for low saturation range from (.25 to .5%) and in high saturation from (1 to 2%).
Potassium
Another example is potassium cobaltinitrite, , which is used as artist's pigment under the name of Aureolin or Cobalt Yellow.
Cobalt blue
Cobalt blue is a blue pigment made by sintering cobalt(II) oxide with alumina at 1200 °C. Chemically, cobalt blue pigment is cobalt(II) oxide-aluminium oxide, or cobalt(II) aluminate, CoAlO. Cobalt blue is lighter and less intense than the (iron-cyanide based) pigment Prussian blue. It is extremely stable and has historically been used as a coloring agent in ceramics (especially Chinese porcelain), jewelry, and paint. Transparent glasses are tinted with the silica-based cobalt pigment smalt.
Prussian blue
Prussian blue (also () · "x") was probably synthesized for the first time by the paint maker Diesbach in Berlin around 1706. Most historical sources do not mention a first name of Diesbach. Only Berger refers to him as Johann Jacob Diesbach. The pigment is believed to have been accidentally created when Diesbach used potash tainted with blood to create some red cochineal dye. The original dye required potash, ferric sulfate, and dried cochineal. Instead, the blood, potash, and iron sulfate reacted to create a compound known as iron ferrocyanide, which, unlike the desired red pigment, has a very distinct blue hue. It was named and in 1709 by its first trader.
Frit
The earliest appearance of blue frit is as a pigment on a tomb painting at Saqqara dated to 2900 BC, though its use became more popular in Egypt around 2600 BC. Blue frit has also been uncovered in the royal tombs at Ur from the Early Dynastic III period. Its use in the Mediterranean dates to the Thera frescoes from the Late Middle Bronze Age.
Biofouling
The 1960s brought a breakthrough, with self-polishing paints that used seawater's ability to hydrolize the paint's copolymer bond and release the stored toxin at a slow, controlled rate. These paints employed organotin chemistry ("tin-based") biotoxins such as tributyltin oxide (TBT) and were effective for up to four years. The discovery that these biotoxins have severe impact on mariculture, with biological effects to marine life at a concentration of 1 nanogram per liter, led to their worldwide ban by the International Maritime Organization in October 2001. TBT in particular has been described as the most toxic pollutant ever deliberately released in the ocean.
Methylene blue
A traditional application of methylene blue is the intravital or supravital staining of nerve fibers, an effect first described by Paul Ehrlich in 1887. A dilute solution of the dye is either injected into tissue or applied to small freshly removed pieces. The selective blue coloration develops with exposure to air (oxygen) and can be fixed by immersion of the stained specimen in an aqueous solution of ammonium molybdate. Vital methylene blue was formerly much used for examining the innervation of muscle, skin and internal organs. The mechanism of selective dye uptake is incompletely understood; vital staining of nerve fibers in skin is prevented by ouabain, a drug that inhibits the Na/K-ATPase of cell membranes.
The Entombment (Bouts)
Pigments bound in glue had an optical quality that rendered them opaque in appearance and unusually vivid. Unlike oil, which makes chalk appear translucent, chalk mixed in glue is rendered as stark white. Similarly, more expensive pigments assume brilliant opacity in a glue medium. The whites are chalk in areas mixed with lead white, especially in the Magdalen's mantle and veil, Christ's shroud and the Virgin's veil. The artist used four blue pigments, an unusual number for paintings of the period, with indigo predominating. As a plant-derived pigment, indigo it has a tendency to fade over time. Azurite and lead-white line the under-paint, while the landscape contains indigo mixed with lead-tin yellow. The sky and Nicodemus' collar are painted with lighter and less intense azurite, while the Virgin's dress is azurite mixed with ultramarine and smalt, a blue ground-glass pigment. "The Entombment" is one of the earliest Western pictorial works of art in which the use of smalt could be ascertained and its presence proves that the pigment was not invented during the sixteenth century, as had previously been believed.
The greens are mostly verdigris, although those predominant in the landscape are mostly blends of blue and yellow pigments, and the green of the cloth worn by Mary Salome is malachite mixed with yellow lake. The browns are blends of reds and blacks. John's red robe is composed from cinnabar and vermilion made from rubia and insect dyes. Some of the reds are mixed with earth colours not susceptible to the effects of light, and have thus survived close to their original appearance. The black pigments are generally bone blacks but in places from charcoal. The blacks are mixed with chalk in areas, producing a red to brownish 'earthy' appearance.
Blue
Ultramarine was made from lapis lazuli, from the mines of Badakshan, in the mountains of Afghanistan, near the source of the Oxus River. The mines were visited by Marco Polo in about 1271; he reported, "here is found a high mountain from which they extract the finest and most beautiful of blues." Ground lapis was used in Byzantine manuscripts as early as the 6th century, but it was impure and varied greatly in colour. Ultramarine refined out the impurities through a long and difficult process, creating a rich and deep blue. It was called "bleu outremer" in French and "blu oltremare" in Italian, since it came from the other side of the sea. It cost far more than any other colour, and it became the luxury colour for the Kings and Princes of Europe.
Blue
Blue was the colour of liberty and revolution in the 18th century, but in the 19th it increasingly became the colour of government authority, the uniform colour of policemen and other public servants. It was considered serious and authoritative, without being menacing. In 1829, when Robert Peel created the first London Metropolitan Police, he made the colour of the uniform jacket a dark, almost black blue, to make the policemen look different from soldiers, who until then had patrolled the streets. The traditional blue jacket with silver buttons of the London "bobbie" was not abandoned until the mid-1990s, when it was replaced by a light blue shirt and a jumper or sweater of the colour officially known as NATO blue.
Blue
In Egypt blue was associated with the sky and with divinity. The Egyptian god Amun could make his skin blue so that he could fly, invisible, across the sky. Blue could also protect against evil; many people around the Mediterranean still wear a blue amulet, representing the eye of God, to protect them from misfortune. Blue glass was manufactured in Mesopotamia and Egypt as early as 2500 BC, using the same copper ingredients as Egyptian blue pigment. They also added cobalt, which produced a deeper blue, the same blue produced in the Middle Ages in the stained glass windows of the cathedrals of Saint-Denis and Chartres. The Ishtar Gate of ancient Babylon (604–562 BC) was decorated with deep blue glazed bricks used as a background for pictures of lions, dragons and aurochs.
Catalin
Catalin was used from the 1930s to 1950s for many household objects, jewelry, small boxes, lamps, cutlery handles, and desk sets. Catalin jewelry, more commonly referred to incorrectly as Bakelite jewelry, was made from the 1930s until the end of World War II when it became too expensive, as every piece had to be individually cast and polished. The American Catalin Corporation introduced 15 new colors in 1927 and developed techniques to create marbling. The colors included yellow, orange, red, greens, blue, and purple, with clear, opaque and marbled versions. In the 1930s, jewelry made in these colors was popular with sets of beads, bangles, earrings, and rings being worn together.
Blue and white pottery
In the early 14th century, mass-production of fine, translucent, blue and white porcelain started at Jingdezhen, sometimes called the "porcelain capital" of China. This development was due to the combination of Chinese techniques and Islamic trade. The new ware was made possible by the export of cobalt from Persia (called "Huihui qing", , "Islamic blue"), combined with the translucent white quality of Chinese porcelain. Cobalt blue was considered as a precious commodity, with a value about twice that of gold. Motifs also draw inspiration from Islamic decorations. A large portion of these blue-and-white wares were then shipped to Southwest-Asian markets through the Muslim traders based in Guangzhou.
Prussian blue
Prussian blue pigment is significant since it was the first stable and relatively lightfast blue pigment to be widely used following the loss of knowledge regarding the synthesis of Egyptian blue. European painters had previously used a number of pigments such as indigo dye, smalt, and Tyrian purple, which tend to fade, and the extremely expensive ultramarine made from lapis lazuli. Japanese painters and woodblock print artists, likewise, did not have access to a long-lasting blue pigment until they began to import Prussian blue from Europe.
Tekhelet
In the 1980s, Otto Elsner,
a chemist from the Shenkar College of Fibers in Israel, discovered that if a solution of the dye was exposed to ultraviolet rays, such as from sunlight, blue instead of purple was consistently produced.
In 1988, Rabbi Eliyahu Tavger dyed "Tekhelet" from "H. trunculus" for the "Mitzvah" (commandment) of "Tzitzit" for the first time in recent history.
Based on this work, four years later, the "Ptil Tekhelet" Organization was founded to educate about the dye production process, and to make the dye available for all who desire to use it. The television show The Naked Archaeologist interviews an Israeli scientist who also makes the claim that this mollusk is the correct animal. A demonstration of the production of the blue dye using sunlight to produce the blue color is shown. The dye is extracted from the hypobranchial gland of "Hexaplex trunculus" snails.
Blue
Lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone, has been mined in Afghanistan for more than three thousand years, and was exported to all parts of the ancient world. In Iran and Mesopotamia, it was used to make jewellery and vessels. In Egypt, it was used for the eyebrows on the funeral mask of King Tutankhamun (1341–1323 BC). Importing lapis lazuli by caravan across the desert from Afghanistan to Egypt was very expensive. Beginning in about 2500 BC, the ancient Egyptians began to produce their own blue pigment known as Egyptian blue by grinding silica, lime, copper, and alkalai, and heating it to . This is considered the first synthetic pigment. Egyptian blue was used to paint wood, papyrus and canvas, and was used to colour a glaze to make faience beads, inlays, and pots. It was particularly used in funeral statuary and figurines and in tomb paintings. Blue was considered a beneficial colour which would protect the dead against evil in the afterlife. Blue dye was also used to colour the cloth in which mummies were wrapped.
Blue billy
The name is a reference to its distinctive bright blue colour, which can make it immediately obvious in other mud or soil. Chemically it is a form of Prussian blue. Although several chemical industry processes could produce it, it is particularly associated with coal gasification and older town gasworks. It has been recognised as a problem effluent and land contaminant since the early industrial period and the first gasworks at the start of the 19th century.
Powder blue
Although smalt itself is a deep, dark blue hue, powder blue is nowadays depicted as more of a pale cobalt blue as illustrated by the examples below, which show powder blue as defined by British and Australian Standards for paint colours along with an example of one manufacturer's actual Powder Blue paint, and a consensus definition produced by an online colour names survey in which 140,000 people took part. It can be seen that although the sources differ on how pale or saturated a colour "powder blue" is, they broadly agree as to its hue.
Cedar oil
Cedarwood oil was used as the base for paints by the ancient Sumerians. They would grind cobalt compounds in a mortar to produce a blue pigment. They could obtain green from copper, yellow from lead antimonate, black from charcoal, and white from gypsum.
Prussian blue
In 1731, Georg Ernst Stahl published an account of the first synthesis of Prussian blue. The story involves not only Diesbach, but also Johann Konrad Dippel. Diesbach was attempting to create a red lake pigment from cochineal, but obtained the blue instead as a result of the contaminated potash he was using. He borrowed the potash from Dippel, who had used it to produce his "animal oil". No other known historical source mentions Dippel in this context. It is, therefore, difficult to judge the reliability of this story today. In 1724, the recipe was finally published by John Woodward.
Chrome yellow
Chrome yellow is lead(II) chromate (PbCrO). It occurs naturally as the mineral crocoite but the mineral itself was never used as a pigment for paint. After the French chemist Louis Vauquelin discovered the new element chromium in 1797 lead chromate was synthesized in the laboratory and its use as a pigment began in the second decade of the nineteenth century.
Phthalocyanine Blue BN
CuPc was first prepared in 1927 by the reaction of copper(I) cyanide and "o"-dibromobenzene, with the apparent intent of preparing phthalonitrile. A couple of years later, workers at Scottish obtained CuPc, FePc, and NiPc from reactions of phthalic anhydride and ammonia. Specifically at the ICI phthalimide plant, a blue contaminant was traced to a by-product formed when the phthalimide reacted with trace amounts of iron from the metal reactor. The chemist took samples of this blue and using sulfuric acid as a solvent, managed to produce a workable pigment. These leads led to the blue pigment sold under the trade name Monastral. Industrial produced commenced in 1935 at ICI, I.G. Farbenindustrie, and DuPont.
Cobalt(II) oxide
Cobalt(II) oxide or cobalt monoxide is an inorganic compound that appears as olive-green to red crystals, or as a greyish or black powder. It is used extensively in the ceramics industry as an additive to create blue colored glazes and enamels as well as in the chemical industry for producing cobalt(II) salts.
Qamsar
From the 13th century and possibly considerably earlier, cobalt was mined near Qamsar. The metal oxide was exported all over the Muslim world for use as the cobalt blue pigment in the decoration of pottery. It is possible that the cobalt ore was also exported to China. In 1301 Abū'l-Qāsim, who came from a family of tilemakers based in Kashan, wrote a treatise on the manufacture of fritware ceramics in which he mentions the village as a source of cobalt ore. Albert Houtum-Schindler visited the village at the end of the 19th century when Qamsar was "a large and flourishing village of about three hundred houses with extensive gardens with fine roses used for the manufacture of rosewater." He described the processing and marketing of the cobalt containing ore.
Jingdezhen porcelain
The blue pigment was derived from cobalt oxide, which had been imported sporadically from Persia in earlier periods. From the 14th century regular imports of the pigment were obtained from Persia. The cobalt was ground and mixed with a medium, then painted onto the dried bodies of the pots, which were then glazed and fired. At a later date a source of cobalt was found within China; this differed from the Persian ore in the proportion of associated manganese. The colour on the fired pots was a grey-blue rather than a pure blue. By mixing three parts Persian ore to two parts Chinese a rich and soft blue was produced, which became labelled as 'Sumatran' or 'Muhammadan' blue.
The Blue Room (Picasso)
The painting was investigated by several scientific methods in 2017. The investigation revealed the hidden portrait described below and the identity of the pigments used in both paintings. Picasso employed a wide palette of vivid pigments such as vermilion, viridian, chrome yellow, and cadmium yellow. He used predominantly Prussian blue for the blue areas.
Chalcanthum
In alchemy, chalcanthum, also called chalcanth or calcanthum, was a term used for the compound blue vitriol (CuSO), and the ink made from it. The term was also applied to red vitriol (a native sulfate of cobalt), and to green vitriol (ferrous sulfate).
Lilac rabbit
The first breeder of lilac-coloured rabbits is thought to be an H. Onslow of Cambridge, England, who began exhibiting them in London in 1913. Lilac-coloured rabbits were also produced the same year by Mabel Illingworth, who crossed Blue Imperials with Havana rabbits. In 1917, a Gouda, Holland breeder named C.H. Spruty crossed Blue Beverens with Havanas to create a larger lilac rabbit called the Gouda or Gowenaar. The Cambridge Blue was created in 1922, by Cambridge University professor R.C. Punnet, by using the same cross as Spruty. The rabbits bred by Illingworth, Spruty and Punnet were merged, creating the Lilac rabbit breed. Due to the number of bloodlines within the breed and breeder preference, the exact shade of colour and size show great variety.
Blue
Blue pigments were originally made from minerals such as lapis lazuli, cobalt and azurite, and blue dyes were made from plants; usually woad in Europe, and "Indigofera tinctoria", or true indigo, in Asia and Africa. Today most blue pigments and dyes are made by a chemical process.
The modern English word "blue" comes from Middle English "bleu" or "blewe", from the Old French "bleu", a word of Germanic origin, related to the Old High German word "blao". In heraldry, the word azure is used for blue.
Cerulean
The pigment Cerulean blue was discovered in 1789 by the Swiss chemist Albrecht Höpfner. Subsequently there was a limited German production under the name of "Cölinblau". It was in 1860 first marketed in the United Kingdom by colourman George Rowney, as "coeruleum". Other nineteenth century English pigment names included "ceruleum blue" and "corruleum blue".
Chlorine
Chlorine gas was first used by French chemist Claude Berthollet to bleach textiles in 1785. Modern bleaches resulted from further work by Berthollet, who first produced sodium hypochlorite in 1789 in his laboratory in the town of Javel (now part of Paris, France), by passing chlorine gas through a solution of sodium carbonate. The resulting liquid, known as ""Eau de Javel"" ("Javel water"), was a weak solution of sodium hypochlorite. This process was not very efficient, and alternative production methods were sought. Scottish chemist and industrialist Charles Tennant first produced a solution of calcium hypochlorite ("chlorinated lime"), then solid calcium hypochlorite (bleaching powder). These compounds produced low levels of elemental chlorine and could be more efficiently transported than sodium hypochlorite, which remained as dilute solutions because when purified to eliminate water, it became a dangerously powerful and unstable oxidizer. Near the end of the nineteenth century, E. S. Smith patented a method of sodium hypochlorite production involving electrolysis of brine to produce sodium hydroxide and chlorine gas, which then mixed to form sodium hypochlorite. This is known as the chloralkali process, first introduced on an industrial scale in 1892, and now the source of most elemental chlorine and sodium hydroxide. In 1884 Chemischen Fabrik Griesheim of Germany developed another chloralkali process which entered commercial production in 1888.
Blue Angels
On 24 April 1946, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Chester Nimitz issued a directive ordering the formation of a flight exhibition team to boost Navy morale, demonstrate naval air power, and maintain public interest in naval aviation. However, an underlying mission was to help the Navy generate public and political support for a larger allocation of the shrinking defense budget. In April of that year, Rear Admiral Ralph Davison personally selected Lieutenant Commander Roy Marlin "Butch" Voris, a World War II fighter ace, to assemble and train a flight demonstration team, naming him Officer-in-Charge and Flight Leader. Voris selected three fellow instructors to join him (Lt. Maurice "Wick" Wickendoll, Lt. Mel Cassidy, and Lt. Cmdr. Lloyd Barnard, veterans of the War in the Pacific), and they spent countless hours developing the show. The group perfected its initial maneuvers in secret over the Florida Everglades so that, in Voris' words, "if anything happened, just the alligators would know". The team's first demonstration before Navy officials took place on 10 May 1946 and was met with enthusiastic approval.
On 15 June Voris led a trio of Grumman F6F-5 Hellcats, specially modified to reduce weight and painted sea blue with gold leaf trim, through their inaugural 15-minute-long performance at their Florida home base, Naval Air Station Jacksonville. The team employed a North American SNJ Texan, painted and configured to simulate a Japanese Zero, to simulate aerial combat. This aircraft was later painted yellow and dubbed the "Beetle Bomb". This aircraft is said to have been inspired by one of the Spike Jones' "Murdering the Classics" series of musical satires, set to the tune (in part) of the William Tell Overture as a thoroughbred horse race scene, with "Beetle Bomb" being the "trailing horse" in the lyrics.
Cobalt glass
Moderately ground cobalt glass (potassium cobalt silicate)—called "smalt"—has been historically important as a pigment in glassmaking, painting, pottery, for surface decoration of other types of glass and ceramics, and other media. Cobalt aluminate, also known as "cobalt blue", can be used in a similar way.
Cobalt Blue (disambiguation)
Cobalt blue is a type of color pigment. Additionally, it may refer to:
Cobalt Blue (novel)
Cobalt Blue is a 2013 fictional drama novel by Indian film director, screenwriter and playwriter Sachin Kundalkar. It was the debut novel of Kundalkar and first published in 2006 in Marathi language, it was re-released in English in 2013 with translation by Jerry Pinto. The story follows two siblings, Tanay and Anuja who fall in love with the same young man who comes to stay at their house in Pune as a paying guest. The novel deals with the theme of sexuality, family and society.
Alcian blue stain
In addition to its wide use as a stain Alcian blue has also been used in other diverse applications e.g. gelling agent for lubricating fluids, modifiers for electrodes, charged coating agents etc.
The Monstral blue found to coat the inside of copper vessels used to process phthalic acid derivatives had led to the discovery of Phthalocyanine in 1907. Attracted by the brilliance, stability and insolubility of this chromophore, attempts were made to reversibly modify it so that it would be carried into fabric in a solution and then easily precipitated (ingrained) into an unleachable but finely well dispersed deposit (hence the name "ingrain dyeing"). From this attempt, Alcian blue (Ingrain blue 1) was first synthesized by the ICI dyestuffs department under N. H. Haddock and C. Wood in the early 1940s and patented in 1947, originally as a textile dye. In 1950 it was used by Steedman as a selective dye for mucins. While the popularity of Alcian blue expanded exponentially, the difficulty involved in its production due to environmentally hazardous intermediate steps made its availability difficult and ICI stopped producing it by 1973. Many of the alternate sources sold similar looking color products with unreliable staining.
Oil paint
During the Age of discovery, new pigments became known in Europe, mostly of the organic type, such as crimson and Indian yellow. In the eighteenth century, the developing science of chemistry deliberately tried to expand the range of pigments, which led to the discovery of Prussian blue and cobalt blue.
Pigment
Two of the first synthetic pigments were white lead (basic lead carbonate, (PbCO)Pb(OH)) and blue frit (Egyptian Blue). White lead is made by combining lead with vinegar (acetic acid, CHCOOH) in the presence of CO. Blue frit is calcium copper silicate and was made from glass colored with a copper ore, such as malachite. These pigments were used as early as the second millennium BCE Later premodern additions to the range of synthetic pigments included vermilion, verdigris and lead-tin-yellow.
Prussian blue
Prussian blue was the first modern synthetic pigment. It is prepared as a very fine colloidal dispersion, because the compound is not soluble in water. It contains variable amounts of other ions and its appearance depends sensitively on the size of the colloidal particles. The pigment is used in paints, and it is the traditional "blue" in blueprints and () Japanese woodblock prints.
Molybdenum blue
The first heteropoly molybdate and first heteropolymetallate, yellow ammonium phosphomolybdate, (NH)PMoO was discovered by Berzelius in 1826. The phosphorus atom in the anion is termed the heteroatom, other heteroatoms are silicon and arsenic. The heteropoly-molybdenum blues have structures based on the Keggin structure. The blue colour arises because the near-colourless anion, such as the phosphomolybdate anion, , can accept more electrons (i.e. be reduced) to form an intensely coloured mixed-valence complex. This can occur in one electron or two electron steps. The reduction process is reversible and the structure of the anion is essentially unchanged.
Cobalt glass
The earliest known example of cobalt aluminate glass dates to a lump from about 2000 BC in ancient Mesopotamia, very possibly intended for use as a pigment; it was rare until the modern era. Cobalt oxide smalt appears as a pigment in Egyptian pottery about five centuries later, and soon after in the Aegean region, and this is the pigment normally known as "smalt". In paintings, smalt has a tendency to lose its colour over a long period, and is little used today. However, when used in ceramics for underglaze decoration, it keeps its colour well, and is the main blue used in blue and white pottery from a wide range of dates and areas, including Chinese blue and white porcelain from the Yuan and Ming dynasties, Renaissance Italian maiolica and Delftware.
Chinese porcelain used smalt glazes from the Tang dynasty onwards, though Chinese cobalt glass is found from the Zhou dynasty (1122–221 BC). Cobalt was used as a pigment in Central Asia from the 13th century. A fragment of a mud painting in the ancient Tangut city of Khara-Khoto has been found to contain smalt, judged to be dated between the 11th and 13th centuries. A large quantity of smalt was purchased for the decoration of the gallery of Francis I of France at Fontainebleau in 1536. Smalt, normally now discoloured, is common in European paintings from the 15th to 17th centuries. For example, it is found in Hans Holbein the Younger's portrait of Sir William Butts (ca. 1540), in Michael Pacher's painting "The Early Fathers' Altar" (ca. 1483), and in the frescos of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494).
Aureolin
Aureolin (sometimes called Cobalt Yellow) is a pigment sparingly used in oil and watercolor painting. Its color index name is PY40 (40th entry on list of yellow pigments). It was first made in 1848 by Nikolaus Wolfgang Fischer in Breslau and its chemical composition is potassium cobaltinitrite. The investigation by Gates gives the exact modern procedures for the preparation of aureolin and also the methods for its identification in paintings.
Prussian blue
To date, the "Entombment of Christ", dated 1709 by Pieter van der Werff (Picture Gallery, Sanssouci, Potsdam) is the oldest known painting where Prussian blue was used. Around 1710, painters at the Prussian court were already using the pigment. At around the same time, Prussian blue arrived in Paris, where Antoine Watteau and later his successors Nicolas Lancret and Jean-Baptiste Pater used it in their paintings.
Methyl yellow
Butter yellow was synthesized by Peter Griess in the 1860s at the Royal College of Chemistry in London. The dye was used to dye butter in Germany and other parts of the world during the latter half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th before being phased out in the 1930s and 40s. It was in the 1930s that research led by Riojun Kinosita showed the link between several azo dyes and cancer, linking butter yellow to liver cancer in rats after two to three months exposure. In 1939, the International Congress for Cancer Research issued a recommendation for the banning of cancer-causing food dyes (including butter yellow) from food production.
Yellow-collared lovebird
The blue mutation was originally found in wild birds in the 1920s and is the oldest colour mutation known in the lovebird genus. The other mutations are a result of selective breeding in aviculture, such as two cobalts which will make a mauve (black). Various color mutations exist, including blue, cobalt, mauve, slate, dilute slate, violet, lutino (ino) and albino.
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.
Joseon
Blue and white porcelain artifacts decorating white porcelain with paintings and designs in underglaze by using natural cobalt pigment are another example of popular wares of the Joseon period. Many of these items were created by court painters employed by the royal family. During this period, the popular style of landscape paintings is mirrored in the decoration of ceramics. Initially developed by the Chinese at the Jingdezhen kilns in the mid-14th century, Joseon began to produce this type of porcelain from the 15th century under Chinese influence. The first cobalt imported from China was used by Korean artists. In 1463 when sources of cobalt were discovered in Korea, artists and their buyers found the material was inferior in quality and preferred the more expensive imported cobalt. Korean porcelain with imported cobalt decoration contradict the emphasis of an orderly, frugal and moderate life in Neo-Confucianism.
Cobalt(II) thiocyanate
Addition of the cobalt thiocyanate reagent to cocaine hydrochloride results in the surface of the particles turning a bright blue (faint blue for cocaine base). The solution changes back to pink upon adding some hydrochloric acid. Addition of chloroform, results in a blue organic layer for both cocaine hydrochloride and cocaine base. Diphenhydramine and lidocaine also give blue organic layers. These compounds are known false positives for cocaine.
Cerulean
In classical times, the word "caerulum" was used to describe blue pigments, particularly mixtures of copper and cobaltous oxides, like azurite and smalt. These early attempts to create sky blue colours were often less than satisfactory due to a limited saturation and the tendency to discolour in reaction with other pigments. See also Tekhelet.
Cobaltocene
Cobaltocene, known also as bis(cyclopentadienyl)cobalt(II) or even "bis Cp cobalt", is an organocobalt compound with the formula Co(CH). It is a dark purple solid that sublimes readily slightly above room temperature. Cobaltocene was discovered shortly after ferrocene, the first metallocene. Due to the ease with which it reacts with oxygen, the compound must be handled and stored using air-free techniques.
Shades of cyan
The first recorded use of "robin's egg blue" as a color name in English was in 1873.
Displayed at right is the colour medium sky blue. This is the colour that is called "sky blue" in Crayola crayons. This colour was formulated by Crayola in 1958. "Sky blue" appears in the 32, 48, 64, 96 and 120 packs of crayons.
At right is displayed the web color teal.
Pottery
The arrival of Chinese blue and white porcelain was probably a product of the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) dispersing artists and craftsmen across its large empire. Both the cobalt die used for the blue colour, and the style of painted decoration, usually based on plant shapes, were initially borrowed from the Islamic world, which the Mongols had also conquered. At the same time Jingdezhen porcelain, produced in Imperial factories, took the undisputed leading role in production, which it has retained to the present day. The new elaborately painted style was now favoured at court, and gradually more colours were added.
Bice
Jo Kirby of the National Gallery London notes the occurrence of the pigment "bice" in three grades in an account of Tudor painting at Greenwich Palace in 1527. In this case, the three grades indicate the use of the mineral azurite rather than a manufactured blue copper carbonate. Similarly, "green bice" in other 16th-records may sometimes have been the mineral malachite. Ian Bristow, a historian of paint, concluded that the pigment "blue bice" found in records of British interior-decoration until the first half of the 17th century was azurite. The expensive natural mineral azurite was superseded by manufactured "blue verditer".