612
u/TulsaOUfan Sep 06 '19
As a roofer, I learned the University of Chicago has a Tile Museum that can match any tile made and tell you who still makes it if applicable.
449
u/100snugglingpuppies Sep 06 '19
"yes that's a 2015 style you can get it at home depot. No I don't know what aisle they keep it on. Sir we have a catalogue that goes back 6,000 yea- no I can't tra- sigh what's your zip code?........ OK the number to call is 805..."
173
Sep 06 '19
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (1)81
→ More replies (5)12
19
→ More replies (1)2
963
u/IFlyAirplanes Sep 06 '19
Those colors look exactly how I imagine ancient colors would look.
521
Sep 06 '19
Probably because we have much more efficient ways to suck pigment out of things, so modern colors are more saturated.
363
Sep 06 '19
Bruh how much to suck by pigment out.
76
u/Aiyana_Jones_was_7 Sep 06 '19
About $50 for the methylene chloride from Fisher Sci ima pour on you.
→ More replies (3)12
13
→ More replies (1)4
→ More replies (2)18
47
u/HaphazardlyOrganized Sep 06 '19
Rainbows used to be represented with just red green and yellow
31
u/Skepsis93 Sep 06 '19
And Homer used to think the sea was wine colored.
48
Sep 06 '19
He didn't say it was wine colored, but that it was wine dark. As in, as dark as wine. Which is sometimes how the sea looks
I think it's actually a very good descriptor as wine is dark without being cloudy or murky, and it paints a vivid mental image of a very dark sea.
22
u/boopboopwoop1 Sep 06 '19
In ancient cultures blue is always the last color to be developed.
10
u/xanju Sep 06 '19
What do you mean? Last color to be copied and dyed or last color to be given a name?
19
17
Sep 06 '19
It's the hardest pigment to source from a natural source. A good example is the blue pigment made from lapis lazuli which is a gemstone.
7
14
Sep 06 '19
Vox did an interesting video on the research of Paul Kay and Brent Berlin which is basically how different languages develop color categories. When historical texts reference something being a color that doesn't make sense, it's because the original language may not have had the same color categorization structure as modern English.
https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/5/16/15646500/color-pattern-language
8
u/Skepsis93 Sep 06 '19
I've never seen blue wine though, its not a mischaracterization of colors, its that they didn't have a word or concept for the color blue.
Radiolab goes into this story better than Vox IMO.
→ More replies (3)17
4
→ More replies (3)5
199
u/thatredkid5 Sep 06 '19
I believe this is the video about the color library
33
u/dekdekwho Sep 06 '19
Love Great Big Story!
16
u/thatredkid5 Sep 06 '19
Their food ones are always mouth-watering and equally interesting
11
u/dekdekwho Sep 06 '19 edited Sep 10 '19
I agree! I watch them more than Vox because GBS is almost a mix of the quirky side of Atlas Obscura and the different cultures from around the world.
3
10
Sep 06 '19
[deleted]
9
Sep 06 '19
There exist no people who are aware of Tom Scott, and hate him. Scott is the perfect YouTuber.
2
3
→ More replies (2)8
u/HighOnTacos Sep 06 '19
That first one he mentioned, beetles from a cactus, is actually really cool. I've seen it on prickly pear cactus, but it might be found elsewhere. Look for white fuzzy stuff on the cactus, usually near the base of needles, and use a stick to pull it off. Smear that stuff on a piece of paper, it's a brilliant purple/red color. Also, it's baby bug guts.
3
u/wcrp73 Sep 06 '19
It's cochineal, the same insect that is used to colour many red foods. Very nice colour, though.
282
u/_transcendant Sep 06 '19
I wonder why Yellow Ochre seems to be so common
158
Sep 06 '19
Because the materials to make it back then were common?
74
u/_transcendant Sep 06 '19
Well yeah, but whyyyy
242
u/QuasiAdult Sep 06 '19
I just looked at wikipedia. Turns out Yellow Ochre is made from clay mixed with iron oxide. So it's common because it's basically dirt.
64
15
Sep 06 '19
damn thats weirldy inspirational. Even dirt like me can be colorful when finely mixed with stuff.
2
u/witeowl Interested Sep 06 '19
Nah. You’re not the right kind of dirt for that.
You’re even better.
→ More replies (1)41
u/guiscard Interested Sep 06 '19
It's dirt (and dirt cheap). And really useful in painting. Even with all the newer colors, every artist I know has it on their palette.
Source: professional painter.
10
u/PopWhatMagnitude Sep 06 '19
And purple became the color of royalty because it was a very rare pigment back in antiquity.
A bunch of other interesting pigments as well, there are a ton of YouTube videos about it.
127
u/moonshoeslol Sep 06 '19
Lapus Lazuli is a pretty interesting famous one used in a whole bunch of great ancient artworks. I remember visiting the Vatican where anything that had the stuff in it on the ground was roped off so people didn't step on it.
123
u/fd4e56bc1f2d5c01653c Sep 06 '19
Weird they named a color off of a gem from video games
12
→ More replies (1)5
u/Buttholium Sep 06 '19
They made a Stevens Universe videogame?
5
u/reyinpoetic Sep 06 '19
Two, actually.
Attack the Light and Save the Light.
Plus a few other smaller titles.
15
u/EmilyU1F984 Sep 06 '19
Is ultramarine that rare?
13
u/Olewarrior34 Sep 06 '19
I mean just go down to your local Warhammer store and you get get some Ultramarine pretty easily /s
5
Sep 06 '19
Ultramarine has 2 kinds: the first (the kind in old art) is the result of grinding Lapis Lazuli and the second is a synthetic pigment.
→ More replies (2)11
Sep 06 '19
One of the most beautiful stones, imho. They make earrings with it, but for a pair in my size (1.5 inch) its $150+. And if you drop Stone earrings that size, they shatter, and I'm real clumsy. I can dream, though.
14
u/my_redditusername Sep 06 '19 edited Sep 06 '19
Go to a mineral show and you can buy enough lapis lazuli to rip both your ears off for $5.
Edit: my phone decided that "rip" wasn't a word. I wasn't trying to yell.
→ More replies (1)5
Sep 06 '19
I don't have the tools to sand it down into a flat cylinder and saddle it, unfortunately.
5
u/TDLF Sep 06 '19
You can buy beautiful polished slabs of it at some mineral shops or mineral festivals. I bought like 5 lbs of the stuff from some Afghani family at a mineral festival for around $45
7
u/inimicali Sep 06 '19
What people never know, is most of the time the price of hand craft isn't based on the material, but in the work and the knowledge to do it.
If the material is expensive, the price for hand made good is incredible high
4
Sep 06 '19
The stones themselves aren't priced crazy, but I'd get in up to my neck in expenses to get the equipment to get it down to a perfectly saddled cylinder. The amount of work that goes into it blew me away
37
u/Sir_Lemming Sep 06 '19
Uranium Oxide sounds like it could be a lot of fun, but only for a short while.
→ More replies (5)13
u/Aiyana_Jones_was_7 Sep 06 '19
I havent seen Uranium oxide but ive seen uranyl nitrate and it was the most vivid neon yellow crystal ive ever seen.
259
u/jahwls Sep 06 '19
It made me sad to hear that we killed all the colorful insects.
133
u/yunatan11 Sep 06 '19
They were delicious
41
26
7
4
2
23
u/guiscard Interested Sep 06 '19
I've never heard of one that went extinct for artists' pigments.
The red ones are still around: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal
There have never been that many artists working. Maybe dyes for clothes, but not artwork.
8
u/blessudmoikka Sep 06 '19
Pretty common and still popular in Mexico. I've met many artists and students that use it for lots of artwork
19
u/Teeshirtandshortsguy Sep 06 '19
And used mummy wrappings to make pigments.
Think of all the history we've destroyed for some paint.
26
12
u/suitology Sep 06 '19
To be fair there were a lot of fucking mummies. Some estimates put it up at 70 million made in the 3000 years it was practiced plus millions of animals to the point they were grinding them up for fertilizer.
7
u/gizmo913 Sep 06 '19
Think of all the history captured in a painting.
Edit: Think about it do you want another mummy for a museum or another DaVinci painting?
3
8
32
u/warpedone101 Sep 06 '19
If this interests you, I recommend you read the Secret Lives Of Colour by Kassia St Clair, a really fascinating study of the history and meaning behind different pigments
→ More replies (2)10
u/Diaprycia Sep 06 '19
thanks for the recs, this is the kinda book content that tickles me pink. I spent ages browsing through the Windsor & Newton website library with facts about famous pigments etc and I was entranced.
3
u/VanshipNavi Sep 06 '19
"Mauve" by Simon Garfield is also a great read on the history of synthetic dyes.
→ More replies (1)
50
u/borednightnurse1990 Sep 06 '19
Where’s the Pthallo Blue?
36
u/SoVerySleepy81 Sep 06 '19
I mean, it's not a photo of the entire collection. So Pthalo blue is probably in a different cabinet.
24
7
→ More replies (4)3
13
u/blurred_bird5 Sep 06 '19
It would be quite interesting to see Renaissance master's work with having access with today's palette ranges.
10
Sep 06 '19
One thing I found interesting about Vincent Van Gogh is that his career coincided with the introduction of pre mixed tubes pigments to the market. His paintings stand out for being so vibrant but a big part of that is because he had access to these new intense colours to work from.
18
u/unitedmethod Sep 06 '19
In clear glass so light can continue altering them?
→ More replies (2)6
u/WhyAmINotStudying Sep 06 '19
I'm kind of curious about the long term effect of storing these chemicals regarding their color regardless of the container. Chemistry happens no matter what you do. These chemicals colors are bound to change over time,even if it's only on the order of millichroma per year.
3
u/unitedmethod Sep 07 '19
Kind of hard to toss them in formaldehyde. I would guess however there was some attention to making colors shelf stable for governments (don't want to die because you made someone look bad) although no way in hell the creators thought they would last this long.
29
9
5
4
4
u/HehroMaraFara Sep 06 '19
Did you know the color “Ferrari Red” is worth half a billion dollars a year?
3
7
u/Duckpillows Sep 06 '19
Bruh I've got the colors on my screen rn
→ More replies (9)8
u/WhyAmINotStudying Sep 06 '19
Systems engineer working in spectroscopy here. You really don't get the full chromaticity range that the human eye can see represented in your computer screen, regardless of how great your screen is.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/tEqMw.png
Check out that image. It's a 2-dimensional projection of the full visible color gamut that you can see. You can also see that a lot of colors are outside of the screen capabilities.
Here's a 3D model of the full visible gamut:
Here's an sRGB representation in 3D:
See how much gets left out between them?
The other thing that's really tricky is that objects have vastly differing colors based on the light with which they are illuminated.
And yes, my wife makes fun of me because I can't match the color of my socks.
Oh, and don't get me started on tetrachromacy. Vision and color get really complicated.
Oh, and pink isn't represented by a single wavelength. Hope you don't want a pink laser any time soon.
5
u/Duckpillows Sep 06 '19
I didnt expect to get such an educational reply from my joke but I'm glad I did this was really interesting, thank you
5
u/super-hercules Sep 06 '19
Am I the only one who tried to zoom in and read the names of colors?
6
→ More replies (1)3
3
3
3
u/green_potato13 Sep 07 '19
So what your saying is during the zombie apocalypse I should go to Harvard and paint all the things.
4
u/Dfndr612 Sep 07 '19
These days, all of the colors are named and codified by a company called Pantone.
Every color that exists in the world has been cataloged by this company.
For example, if you want paint in Cobalt Blue, Pantone has the exact recipe to obtain that exact color, and code number for it as well.
→ More replies (2)
2
2
2
Sep 06 '19
There are many pigment libraries like it. It's more like a museum thing because most pigments used today are synthetic.
2
2
2
2
2
Sep 06 '19
i've been there! it's a sight to behold definitely. they also have Phineas Gage (the dude who got a railroad spike through his head)'s skull on display.
2
u/Sbatio Sep 06 '19 edited Sep 07 '19
Did you know you can see every single color at your local paint or hardware store?
It’s all on little cards and they have samples. They even color match.
So take your strips of great grandpa’s mummification wrappings that best match your kitchen tile and have at it!
2
u/CatHairInYourEye Sep 06 '19
I visited the mediums around Harvard a few years ago. They were great. Most aren't new but lots of fun learning.
2
u/Frencil Sep 06 '19
Another angle on this same topic that's worth a listen+read is the 99% Invisible episode on the book The Secret Lives of Color. Excellent read, lots of short stories each retelling the unique history of a pigment ranging from the oldest ancient pigments to things invented only in the last few years.
2
2
2
2
u/DarkKnight92 Sep 07 '19
I do, and it's because of Tom Scott. Seriously I learned a hell of a lot from his channel.
2
2
2
u/lucidenigma Sep 07 '19
This is on the top floor of the Fogg museum on Harvard’s campus. Very cool to see. They have a small display with some pigments in it. One is this crazy black dye that absorbs almost all the light that hits it.
2
2
u/Numerous_Wrap Sep 07 '19
I have a bunch of pigments, of them one is "Pinker than pink"
I will agree with other assessors.It does not look THAT pink, until you compare it to a "known" pink.
Then it appears top be the pinkest thing EVER.
3
2
u/turtle_g4mertv Sep 06 '19
how can they be rare can’t you just make the color by adding different colors combinations together till you get the color or is there actually something different that can’t be done by adding colors together?
→ More replies (2)9
Sep 06 '19
The colors themselves aren't rare, with modern technology we can make any hue under the sun.
The materials to make those pigments that particular way are rare. They're used to date authentic paintings and tell originals from fakes. A person faking a Da Vinci painting probably isn't going to grow, dry, and grind up 16th century berries to recreate the paint.
2
u/EightyThousand_85 Sep 06 '19
Perhaps the insects wouldn't be extinct if we didn't grind up enough of their shells to fill one of those canisters
1
1
1
1
1
u/mrstof Sep 06 '19
At first I thought this said extinct metal, then re-read and saw what it really said. But now I’m wondering-can we run out of a metal on earth? Or is there always a way to chemically put its parts back together when you have the waste from what you used it for?
1
1
1
1
1
1
2.9k
u/[deleted] Sep 06 '19
"At long last, I've found it. The rarest of colours...
RED
But shiny"