Development of colouring matters then and now

1. Origins of colour matter

The first colouring matter, that were used by man are of mineral origin. The oldest coloured images, which are passed on to us, are those of animals, in the caves of Altamira in Northern Spain and in Lascaux, South of France. Their age is estimated to be 10.000 to 20.000 years. They used colouring materials which were organic, naturally appearing pigments, which were made of chalk, manganese ore, aluminium hydrate silicates and iron oxides, etc.

The first use of vegetable and animal secretions cannot be determined any further. It is only known that thousands of years ago the art of Dying with animal colouring materials was of great importance in the Japanese, Chinese and Indian cultures. Also in ancient Egypt vegetable Dyes were already used.

a) Natural dyestufts
Animal dyes

• Purple, the probably most famous dyestuff has been extracted from the glandular secretion of the purple snail. For 1g of purple 12.000 (!) purple snails were necessary.
• Scarlet, the cheaper successor of purple was made of shield-lice, which were scratched from the leaves in April and May and later dried.

Vegetable dyes

• The madder root had also been planted in middle europe since Charles the Great. The Red Dye was produced by disintegration, drying and boiling of the root.
• Out of the wood plant a blue dye was extracted. The juice of this plant contains a substance which changes very fast to blue if it has contact with air.
• The wood plant was replaced by the Indigo-dye, because the Indigo-plant was thirty times more fruitful and the resultant blue was much clearer.

b) Synthetic dyes

The first synthetic colouring matter was introduced by W.H. Perkin from England in 1856. Mauvein is a basic azine dye, which dyes purple red in presence of acids. Today it is of no great importance to us anymore. Three years later Verguin from France discovered Fuchsin as a second synthetic dye. Fuchsin belongs to the group of triaryle-methan dyes and dissolves in water giving a red colour. Today Fuchsin is of no more importance because of its insufficient holding with acids and alkalis.
With the synthesis of the dyes Mauvein, Fuchsin and Alizarin a revolutionary development was initiated, in which Germany soon took the leading role.

Synthetic dyes are e.g.:

- basic dyes
Because of the chemical composition these are brillant shining dyes but fade in light (fast bleaching effect) and they are in many cases ecologically hazardous.

- acid-, direct- and reactive dyes
These dyes are not of the intense brillance of basic dyes, but they have good holding in light and are not as ecologically hazardous as basic dyes.

c) Pigments

Natural and synthetic pigments attract by their
excellent fade resistant quality.
Here you divide as follows:
- earth pigments (e.g. ochre)
- mineral pigments (e.g. magnesium)
- metallic pigments (e.g. aluminium)
- carbon black pigments

2. International classification of colouring mailers

Every chemical dye and every pigment has an international classification number, which is the so-called Colour Index Number.
So tradenames can be adjoined to their producers without any doubt, e.g.: