The Chemistry of Pigments

Abstract

THIS book is divided into four parts or chapters.The first of these, occupying just seventeen pages, deals with the optical origin of colour; the second chapter, entitled the “Application of Pigments,”discusses in separate sections their purely artistic uses, their decorative employment and their protective qualities. These sections are followed by descriptions of the methods of applying pigments, including pastel, water-colour, tempera, oil-painting, keramic painting, enamelling, glass and mosaic. Large use is made, in the first of these sections of chapter ii., of Russell and Abney's 1888 report on the “Action of Light on Water-Colours,” and in the third section of Mr. Harry Smith's recent experiments on the protection against the rusting of iron afforded by many different kinds of paints. The two chapters which constitute the body of the work before us and occupy a couple of hundred pages are entitled respectively “Inorganic Pigments” and “Organic Pigments.” Here we find much information of interest and importance in the actual analyses given of individual samples of different pigments and in the notes on methods of examining and testing pigments. But some pigments, such, for instance, as aureoliri and cadmium yellow, are treated too summarily in view of their artistic importance, while to other pigments, notably to the large group of “coal-tar lakes,” is assigned a treatment which they do not deserve.

The Chemistry of Pigments.

By E. J. Parry J. H. Coste. Pp. viii + 280. (London: Scott, Greenwood and Co., 1902.) Price 10s. 6d. net.