﻿ Pigments through the Ages - Introduction   font size:  a  a  a
A modern pigment shop in Venice, Italy, where the "traditional"
painter can buy pigments to mix into paints themselves.  A turn-
of-the-century merchant Mabille, who traded under the name Au
rapin, c. 1905.  Paintings are made from mud and a stick with
hairs...  Pigments are the basis of all paints, and have been
used for millennia. They are ground colored material. Early
pigments were simply as ground earth or clay, and were made into
paint with spit or fat. Modern pigments are often sophisticated
masterpieces of chemical engineering.  This exhibit includes
most important pigments used through the early 20th century.  In
a microscope, we see that paintings and other painted objects
consist simply of pigments suspended in a substance – like chips
in a chocolate chip cookie. The "substance" can vary, from oil
or egg yolk in paintings, to plaster in frescos, or
sophisticated plastics in automobile finishes. Moreover there
are many interesting rela