Adrienne's Stretch The Rules

Color is a fascinating topic. Throughout history,various cultures have ascribed meanings and symbolism to almost all colors. For every region and age,pigments and dyes were produced.
It is believed that the Chinese were the first to manufacture and perfect color usage tens of thousands of years ago. The Chinese were also among the first to practice Color Healing with recorded “diagnoses”in a chronicle that was 2,000 years old,called,“The Nei/ching.”
Egypt is another region known for its use of color. Modern seattle seo is inspired by the technical achievements of the Egyptians. The ancient Egyptians believed color to have magical healing properties. The ancient Egyptians developed yellow,orange,and red paints from pigments found in the soil.
Prior to the 19th century,the term,“paint,”was only applied to the oil-bound kinds;the kinds bound with glue were called “distemper.”By 1,000 BC,the development of paints and varnishes from acacia tree gum or,gum Arabic was developed. New colors were being discovered during this time,and umbers,ochers,and blacks were readily available.
Around 1500 BC in Greece and Crete,painting became known as an art form. It was also during this time that the Romans learned of Egyptian color skills. In fact,it was the Romans who gave us purple,which was made using a pound of royal purple dye that required the crushing of four million mollusks. This is the time when the Egyptians created the first new color of the period,“Egyptian Blue.”
“Naples Yellow”was discovered around 500 BC. To make Genuine Indian Yellow,it had to be sent to London for purification after mixing mud with concentrated cow urine. Sap Green came from the Blackthorn berry,and Sepia Brown from the dried ink sac of squid.
Plato made one of the earliest color discoveries in mixing two colors together,producing a third. The manufacture of color was thus changed.
While color was important and for some cultures,even a religious aspect,none of the previous groups named many colors. In the 1960s,two anthropologists conducted an international study of color naming. Frequently,many languages only had two color terms,equivalent to white light and black dark. 98 languages were studied by the anthropologists,and it was then discovered that the highest number of basic color terms were found in the English language,in which we have eleven:white,black,red,yellow,green,orange,pink,purple,blue,brown,and grey. The other millions of color names often heard are “borrowed”names,e.g.,peach,graph,gold,tan,avocado,watermelon,etc.
What makes up paint is pigment,which is a binder that holds it together. Paint is easily applicable with the right thinners. The first synthetic pigment was produced by the Egyptians 5,000 years ago from grinded down blue grass – it was called “Blue Frit.”
Prior to the 16th century,pigment color greatly depending on dyestuffs,which could be grown in or were indigenous to Europe and similar temperate regions. “Natural”dyestuffs were available from 1550 – 1850,but the range of available dyestuffs was extended with tropical dyestuffs from Indian,Central America,etc.
Between 600 BC – AD 400,the Romans and Greeks produced varnishes. And in another culture across the world,red dye was considered more valuable than gold. This culture was the Aztec civilization,and they practiced Color Healing along with the Chinese.
“Cochineal red”was discovered by the Aztecs and made using the female cochineal beetle. A million insects were needed to make one pound of water-soluble extract. The Spaniards introduced red to Europe in the 16th century.
Around 2500,“red lead”was discovered by accident. Demand for white lead increased,and while it occurs naturally,the demand brought about manmade reproductions Vitruvius,a Roman writer,architect,and engineer,describes what white lead production was like in the 2nd century AD. The Dutch greatly increased white lead availability by the 17th century and reduced cost by inventing the “Stack Process,”which is a chemical process that will cast metallic lead as thin buckles,stacks them up and leaves them for four to sixteen weeks,which changes the blue-grey lead to white lead all white lead paints contain chalk in their undercoats;purer white lead is saved for finish coats.
The first real synthetic dye,“Mauveine,”was discovered by Henry Perkins in 1856. This brought about the revelation that many dyes could be made synthetically and inexpensively. From that point,linseed oil started being mass produced as well as pigment-grade zinc oxide or,white paint.
Industrialists produced the first washable paint using cast-iron paint mills and zinc-based pigments in the 1870′s;it’s named was “Charlton White.”D.R. Averill of Ohio patented the first ready-mixed paint in 1867,but it didn’t quite catch on.
For ten years,Sherwin Williams tried to perfect a formula in which fine paint particles would remain suspended in linseed oil. They succeeded in 1880 when they developed a formula that greatly exceeded the quality of all available paints during that point in time. Emulsions with similar formulas were marketed and produced as “oil bound distempers.”New paints became available in tins in 1880,with a large number of colors and were exported all over the world.
In this day and age,we have thousands of colors available to us. From the Egyptians to today’s painting contractors,colors have never been more fascinating.