A Taxonomy of Historical Pigments
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A Taxonomy of Historical Pigments ©The Pigmentum Project, 2006 THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIVE PIGMENT TAXONOMY • Lack of defined structure. Most lists are at best only semi- to this issue, as will be discussed later. As a first step it was necessary to address the issue of how many The principal reasons for establishing systematic listings in general systematically organised, usually by a utilitarian feature such as distinct pigments might have been used historically. A major reason for are self-evident and the development of such schema has occurred in colour or stability. For identification purposes we are more this was that, apart from the desire for comprehensiveness, we also most fields of endeavour. A few of the benefits are: likely to be interested in the chemistry (elemental composition, crystal structure and so forth). wanted to avoid having to make many radical alterations to • Functional classification. The organisation of the listing imparts • Inconsistency. Although there appears to be a broad consensus accommodate revisions when the need for new groupings arose in the a level of meta-information to the members of the list, implying in the way some terms are used, there is no field-wide standard. future. Consequently we elected to cover as wide a range of sources as specific relationships. Moreover, the terms that are most frequently and widely used possible, so that not just those pigments found on Western European • Common language. Field-wide acceptance of such listings gives also often fail the overextension criterion. easel paintings are detailed (though for which there is an inevitable bias, a common set of terms that can be used. • Poorly defined relationships. There is often a pronounced gap largely because most of the research has been conducted in this area), • As an aide memoir. between terms and our ability to relate analytical findings to but also those from wallpaintings, decorative paint and archaeological them. An instance of this might be certain proprietary names material, world-wide, without barrier of time or place. We have The classification of pigments too, has been addressed in the past (e.g., ‘Freeman’s Lead White’) that refer to particular excluded compounds only used in ceramic glazes but included those and examination of the literature shows that there are numerous pigment compositions, perhaps known from documentary sources but not applied as an unfired decoration. Dyes are also only included insofar as lists, both ancient and modern. It was found however, that there are a identified analytically because the specific relationship between they have been used in a pigment context, as colour laid onto a number of consistent issues that cannot be readily resolved without the components is unknown (Corbeil et al, 1999). substrate. forming a new listing. These issues include: • Use of related terms as synonyms. Frequently, words that are On a similar basis it was decided that the work should be inclusive. Where the evidence for use of a compound was only partial, it • Incompleteness. Typically, pigment lists are narrow in focus, given as synonymous are so only in a very broad sense. In was none-the-less included; an example might be a mineral identified by dealing with certain periods or places, or groups of pigments. practice these often seem to be variants: pigments of basically X-ray diffraction, where it may actually be the synthetic analogue or an Examples are the books by Harley (1982) and Carlyle (2001) similar constitution, but from different sources and/or prepared alteration product of another, more common, pigment. It also seemed that review British sources from the seventeenth to the by different methods. In essence this means that there may be appropriate to include some minerals which are rare and unlikely to nineteenth centuries, and recent textbooks on industrial differences between them that allow distinction, perhaps by have been used themselves as pigments but which are well characterised inorganic and organic pigments by Buxbaum (1998) and Herbst particle morphology or the presence of other components that analogues of pigments (examples would be the rare mineral bayerite and and Hunger (1997). These are all excellent sources in their own relate to manufacturing practices. An example of this is the use the isostructural aluminium hydroxide produced synthetically, or sphere, but tend to fail on the periphery of their remit (say, the of the term ‘French ultramarine’ to mean any synthetically cuprorivaite and the related calcium copper silicate commonly known as chemistry in documentary-based reviews, the history in the prepared ultramarine; in fact it should properly be applied only ‘Egyptian blue’). Thirdly, the chemical literature was also consulted to chemistry-based ones). A partial exception is the Colour Index to a synthetic ultramarine prepared by the Guimet process. clarify what related forms and crystalline phases of a compound existed (e.g., 3rd edition, 1971), which in fact contains many obscure and might reasonably be stable under pigment conditions (though we compounds and is evidently based on sources dating as far back excluded related compounds not directly described as pigments that are as the late nineteenth century The intent of it though is clearly to DEVELOPMENT OF THE PIGMENT LISTINGS unstable under ‘normal’ conditions such as high-pressure species). A serve the needs of the current industrial sphere, which leads to number of other compounds detailed in the historical literature were poor coverage of historical pigments. In response to these issues two core listings were developed, one also added, even though they may have been experimental – Salter’s • Overextension. Many commonly used terms in fact refer to more relating to general and historical pigment terms and the other to identifiably distinct chemical compounds. That for general pigment 1869 edition of Field’s Chromatography for example gives a large than one compound, so that use of them can lead to both loss of number of such compounds – the rationale here being that they might information and gross error. Study of the context in which terms will not be discussed here. However, both core listings were based on a wide variety of sources including critical literature surveys of have been used or are of possible interest both to historians and modern pigment literature uses the term ‘lead white’ for practitioners; these have also been cross-checked with the chemical example, frequently seems to equate to the lead carbonate historical documentary sources, secondary reviews of documentary sources, modern published sources giving analytical results from studies literature in an effort to provide some indication of composition. hydroxide 2PbCO3.Pb(OH)2, even when there is little of historical artefacts, modern literature on commercial pigments and It has also been necessary in reading the literature to decide if a confirmatory evidence that this specific compound is present. It distinct pigment is involved or if a term refers to an established might though, in the broadest sense, as any white compound certain related chemical literature (primarily studies of individual compounds or compound groups giving known crystal structures, synonym, variant, or is of indefinite or variable meaning. A synonym, containing lead, be applied to any one of the various carbonates as in the usual meaning of the word, refers here to a term of direct and carbonate hydroxides or, as Winter (1981) and others have stabilities and so forth). Use was also made of various online abstracting services. equivalence, but not considered to be the primary common name. shown, a number of other sulfates, phosphates and compound Various types of synonym might be discerned such as: mixtures. The related error of using the mineral name Some limits had to be necessarily placed on the scope to make the (hydrocerussite) without qualification is also not uncommon. project achievable. So, while the aim was to be as comprehensive as Historical synonyms - terms of historical usage, now discontinued; • False specificity. A related issue is the use of overly narrow possible in the literature examined, certain types of sources such as Contemporary synonyms - terms of current usage or recent definitions of pigment terms. A classic example is so-called manuscript accounts, port records, modern patent literature and such invention; ‘verdigris’, where this might be one of at least eight, possibly like were not generally reviewed except in certain important cases, or Linguistic synonyms - either ten, compounds thought to exist (Scott, 2001). It is a surprisingly via the secondary literature consulted. Constraints were also placed on Equivalent terms in different languages or common practice however to identify the compound merely as terminology in languages other than English unless there was obvious Orthographic variants; transfer of terminology or an evident etymological link. Modern trade Commercial synonyms - specific trade names applied by ‘verdigris (Cu(CH3COO)2.3Cu(OH)2)’. Numerous other examples could be given. names were also largely ignored though some consideration was given manufacturers or suppliers to identical pigments. 2 Variants on the other hand are pigments that have some distinct characterisation and naming. Colour is an obviously tempting approach reason that IUPAC only provides for crystal system clarification (e.g., physical, or perhaps chemical, feature that alters a specific generic or – all blue pigments together, and