Pigment making

 

History

The use, extraction and hand-making of pigments for use on the body, in art and more widely within culture is worldwide. There are areas of the world that have rich geology that are known for their mines and subsequently the name of the place enters the nomenclature of the colour itself e.g. Sienna pigments.

In Europe:

• Roussillon, France. Where they still manufacture iron-oxide rich earths into bright pigments.
• U.K, Oxford. An earth pigment called ‘Oxford Ochre’ was once manufactured in Shotover.
• Bideford Black – Mineral Black made in Bideford, U.K.
• Wales, Florence Mine
• ‘Rosso Inglese’ an iron rich earth pigment made minerals from Clearwell was used for the Sistine Chapel and is listed in the Vatican receipts archive, according to Jonathan Wright (free miner of Clearwell Caves).

Pigments are also used widely by Indigenous communities of America, Australia, Hawaii, New Zealand, Polynesia and East Africa.

Since Palaeolithic times, pigment making and its use has been important for human expression. In the U.K. we have two archaeological sites that suggest the use of hand-made pigments dates back to 9000 BC or 11,000 years ago.

Earth pigments 

These are pigments made from coloured rock, clay or sediment and are some of the most ancient forms of pigment.

For example, red ochre (ruddle, reddle) is an earth pigment that has had a multitude of different uses throughout time in the U.K:

• Mixed with animal fat and used to preserve sails in the south of England (Devon/Cornwall).
• Used as a polishing compound for lenses during the 1800s.
• Used to mark sheep by farmers (ruddle).
• Used in decoration, wall paintings, fresco, plasterwork see ‘Oxford Ochre’.
• Pigments made from dyes or ‘lake pigments’.

Lake pigments

These are pigments that have been derived from a range of natural plant and animal dyes. A number of different manual and chemical processes converts the dyes into insoluble, more chemically stable pigments.

Lake pigments have been produced since Roman times in the U.K.

Uses of pigments in the UK today

Pigments are important substances that impart colour to other materials, most often used as surface colourants, they have a clear geographical and cultural link to a sense of place. They can be made from mineral origin, such as iron-rich clays, or of animal and plant origin as dyes converted into lake pigments. Lake pigments are made from natural dyes that have been rendered insoluble by precipitating them onto a substrate particle; this is a lengthy process that requires hand mixing, grinding, washing and drying amongst other processes.

The use of pigments to create paint and ink are associated with many cultural practices in the U.K:

• Illumination/ icon painting/ folk art/costumes
• Fine art practises: painting, printmaking (lithography, screen printing) hand tinting photographs etc.
• Architectural decoration: painting of houses with local earth (exterior and interior) e.g. Oxford ochre
• Botany (plant-based pigments)
• Dyeing textiles with organic dyes
• Re-enactments/ historical societies

 

Techniques

Pigments are used in a wide variety of applications; for making paint, inks, or tinting plaster, fresco, ceramics, for colouring resin and varnishes. A pigment is a colouring material, usually a fine particulate that is insoluble and used in conjunction with a binder in order to make a paint. The craft of hand manufacturing historical pigments involves numerous processes and skilful hand techniques to extract clean and bright colourants from raw materials.

The following processes go into creating colour from these raw materials (these steps are all done by hand).

Processing Lake pigments:

• Identify and locate dye plant, hand-collect plant material (petals, stalks, leaves, seeds or roots).
• Process plant material (removal of unwanted parts, washed and cut into small pieces or dried and ground into a powder).
• Ferment plant material by soaking in water (sometimes with the addition of an acid).
• Put plant material into fresh water and discard old.
• Keep plant cuttings in warm or simmering water for a period of hours.
• Remove plant material from water and filter using paper filters or sieve through a fine cotton or muslin cloth.
• Weigh out alum (used as the ‘base’ to attach the dye to) and add this in a warm solution to plant decoction.
• Weigh alkali (used to ‘fix’ the dye to the alum substrate particles) and add to decoction.
• Stir solution until chemical reaction finishes.
• Filter and wash the precipitated, solid pigment.
• Dry wet pigment on a non-absorbent surface.
• Once dry, grind with a pestle and mortar.
• Sieve pigment to create a uniform and fine particle size (using a 50 mesh sieve).

Processing Earth pigments:

• Locate clay, rock, or sediment rich in iron oxide.
• Collect samples by hand using specialist trowel and put into labelled containers.
• If sample is a soft clay put it in a bucket and mix with water.
• Hard rocks need to be broken down by using different kinds of hammers and chisels to isolate striations of colour within their makeup. Sometimes rocks are placed in canvas bags and crushed with hammers.
• Remove any large organic material (leaves, twigs etc) by hand.
• Remove any large mineral impurities by hand (gravel, flint nodules etc).
• Sieve sample through a series of coarse to medium sieves.
• Let the sample settle to the bottom of the container and pour off the water leaving pigment sludge at the bottom.
• Add fresh water and repeat washing of mineral sample to remove small organic particles and soluble impurities (e.g. salt).
• Levigate sample. This is to isolate different particle sizes in the sample. This is done by adding water to sample before the particles have settled out fully. The water containing the finest samples (that are in suspension) is then poured off into a separate container.
• Allow water to evaporate from sample or spread pigment sludge sample on a non-absorbent surface.
• Once dry, grind with a pestle and mortar.
• Sieve pigment to create a uniform and fine particle size (using a 50 mesh sieve).

The pigments created from these processes can then be mixed with an appropriate binding medium to create various paints and inks or mixed into other materials (like plaster) to tint them.

These processes are by no means representative of the many different ways that pigments can be created but help to identify how pigment making uses repeated movements of the body to create colour (smashing, grinding, washing etc).

 

Local forms

Local earth colours will produce different colours and different grain sizes in the pigments due to differences in the geology of the areas. So pigment making is linked intrinsically to place or locality.

 

Sub-crafts

Issues affecting the viability of the craft

 

Support organisations

 

 

Craftspeople currently known

Training providers

• UCL, The Slade: ‘Materials Research Project’ is a course led by Jo Volley as part of the BFA there. Lucy Mayes and Ruth Siddall have both taught workshops on pigment making.
• City & Guilds of London Art School and The School of Traditional Arts have previously run workshops on this subject run by David Cranswick.
• Museums/galleries/ institutions are starting to run workshops relating to pigment making to support their art history courses on colour. Lucy Mayes is teaching pigment making at The V&A and Kew Gardens this year.

 

Other information

There are many artists that use pigments as a part of their own individual practices, and a few that collect their own pigments but very few utilise this craft as their main income-generating activity. There is a definite trend within the arts to be more sustainable and use ethically sourced materials. This is something that is of the utmost importance; the artist must have control over the quality and sourcing of their materials in order to produce authentic, ecologically mindful work. The mining of specifically toxic heavy metals such as cobalt, cadmium and lead-based pigments (found in modern pigments and commercially made paint), rather than iron-rich earth colours, is detrimental to the environment. Toxic heavy metals are present in many pigments available to purchase from art shops world-wide. The production of modern synthetic pigments in a laboratory environment also brings up issues of safe waste removal/ pollution.

 

References

• UCL/ Slade: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/news/2020/03/inaugural-world-pigment-day
• Dr Ruth Siddall/ World Pigment Day: https://www.instagram.com/worldpigmentday/?hl=en  https://ucl.academia.edu/RuthSiddall/   https://wildpigmentproject.org/ruth-siddall
• The Pigment Compendium: https://www.routledge.com/Pigment-Compendium/Eastaugh-Walsh-Chaplin-Siddall/p/book/9780750689809
• Patrick Baty: Historical paint consultant
• http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/
• David Cranswick: https://www.davidcranswick.com/
• Clearwell Caves ochre mining: https://clearwellcaves.com/about-us/#ochresection
• Florence Mine Arts Centre: https://www.florenceartscentre.com/
• Pip Seymour and Rebecca Wallace: https://www.wallaceseymour.co.uk/
• Nicholas Walt – owner of L. Cornelissen & Son pigment retailer