Colour has fascinated culture throughout history, every age and region has produced dyes and pigment depending on the available resources. Colour has been with us for more than 20,000 years.
Evidence survives in early cave paintings and the ancient Chinese are considered to have brought its manufacture and use to a state of perfection tens of thousands of years ago.
We began using colour pigment as early as prehistoric times when humans drew on the walls of caves and their own bodies. They used moss, chewed ends of branches and their own fingers to apply mixtures of natural materials as paint.
The prehistoric paint palettes were all made from pigments obtained from the earth. The earliest pigments were earth pigments (ochre and umber), charcoal (carbon black and bone black) and white (calcium).
