Strange & Bizarre Paints & Pigments: Mummy Brown Paint
- Andy McIlvain
- Nov 4, 2024
- 3 min read
Humanity is obsessed with death.
Just watch the news and it is non-stop reports of when, where, and how people die.
Yet in our relationships, we typically avoid discussing death until it confronts us with the death of a friend or loved one.
Have you contemplated your death?
Being obsessed with death does not mean we respect those who have died. In fact humanity has since the beginning disrespected the body of other dead humans. In America consider how we treat the remains of Native Americans.
Death is still the last enemy.
1 Corinthians 15:25–26
25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
Our disregard for the human body as God created it is reflected in abortion, transgenderisum, pornography, and a whole host of body degradation.
Disrespect and hubris were manifested in the use of human bodies as paint pigment.
Many of the estimated two million cemeteries in the United States are largely abandoned.
For further reading: The Potential of Our Decay: Cemeteries That Save the American Landscape
Video from Dirty Blue Tube
Strange & Bizarre Paints & Pigments: Mummy Brown Paint
"Mummy Brown pigment… a bottle from 1857. Pigment acquired from a private collector, seeing binder for the fist time in ages, or maybe the first time ever.
Said to be a pigment made out of ground mummy's, this pigment was a charred version of it. Something that was quite a common thing to do to get deeper hues and a finer pigment.
Working with this, as well as Indian Yellow and Paris Green, was an exciting thing to do for me! The holy trinity of historic pigments are now complete!
As a pigment itself, it felt a bit gritty at the start but broke down to a lovely smooth and fine paint. It smells a bit like an earth paint with a hint of unburnt coals. There is also a fragrance I can't quite put my finger on, but that might make sense looking at the origin of the pigment (I didn't sniff the dry pigment.. I don't like the idea of ''used to be'' people dust boogers up my nose..).
As a swatch, something interesting happened. I first made paint out of it, as usual. The hue went from an almost raw umber mixed with black to a warm burnt sienna. There is even some resemblance with Cassel Earth, though a bit warmer and more dull when dried.
After this, I made a tiny swatch from unmulled pigment mixed in alcohol (will post this in my "brown" story highlights). This shows an amazing array of browns, going from yellowish to deep red." from the video introduction
Some of the world’s most famous paintings were made with paint from ground mummies
'Rare and costly paints have shaped art history in unforeseen ways. Mummy brown caused one artist to bury his paint.
aint is made up of many different components, each fulfilling a different function. There’s the medium or binder, which alters the paint’s properties by making it thicker or thinner or extending its drying time. There’s the solvent, which can be added to prevent the formation of clumps and globs. Last but not least, there are pigments, which give paint its opaqueness and, crucially, color.
Nowadays, most artists use synthetic pigments. These are mass-produced and made from acids, petroleum, or other chemicals. This is only a recent development, however. For most of art history, artists had to use biological pigments derived from minerals or clay.
Generally speaking, biological pigments are much more difficult to obtain than synthetic ones. A prime example is the color blue, long coveted because it rarely appears in nature. Another example is tyrian purple, a textile dye once used to color the robes of Roman emperors. Its only source was the mucus secreted by species of Murex shellfish living off the coast of Tyre. For every 1.5 grams of dye, 12,000 shellfish had to be crushed.
Most art lovers are not interested in learning about pigments, which — like easels, brushes, or canvasses — are just tools, and not nearly as meaningful as the masterpieces they helped create. In reality, however, pigments had a massive influence on the course of art history. The discovery of new pigments dictated how painters arranged their pallet, as did the eventual loss of other pigments. Color itself was also highly symbolic, often in ways related to its production process.
“It’s important not to overlook this material side of painting,” Lola Sanchez-Jauregui, a curatorial fellow at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge told Hyperallergic in an article about the blue color called lapis lazuli. She added that “viewing these tools will help people approach the paintings from a new point of view.” from the article:
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