The library of rare colors
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- Äas pĆidĂĄn 17. 03. 2019
- The Forbes Pigment Collection at the Harvard Art Museums is a collection of pigments, binders, and other art materials for researchers to use as standards: so they can tell originals from restorations from forgeries. It's not open to the public, because it's a working research library -- and because some of the pigments in there are rare, historic, or really shouldn't be handled by anyone untrained.
More about the Forbes Pigment Collection: www.harvardartmuseums.org/art...
The Harvard Art Museums: www.harvardartmuseums.org/
Edited by Michelle Martin (@mrsmmartin)
Audio mix by Graham Haerther haerther.net/
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I realised, after filming this, that it feels a little weird to have my introduction outside the Museum and the interview inside. But I'm weeks out of Boston now, so it has to stand!
>1 week ago
how long ago did you flim this and why did you put this 1 week ago
I didnât think it was weird!
It feels like you're just pointing out a fact as you happen to walk past it, and not like you're about to go inside
Works just fine, gives a general location then the interview!
3:17 "Lead white is toxic in the way that lead is...toxic."
Best quote in the video.
You can tell its an Aspen by the way it is
well, its a reasonable observation. Some lead compounds arent toxic at all (for example if the lead is bound in a very stable way). Some lead compounds are toxic, but in a different way (due to a different mechanism) than pure lead.
@@TheVergile True. My mouth has a lot of mercury in it.
Instructions not clear, rubbed lead white over my phallus.
The mummi brown was really funny too đ
I had a dream about a brand new colour I discovered! However, it turned out to be just a pigment of my imagination...
Oh, hi Dad!
Sighs. Take your upvote.
@@OrionMelodyMusic I did not hit her I did nooooot.
Oh hi Dad
I see what hue did there
I had an inkling there would be bad puns to follow. Seems to be making people madder..
This feels like something someone would start as a hobby, and somehow turned it into a job.
The pigment library or the channel?
I have a feeling theyâre referring to the pigment collection; but I also feel like the statement is equally applicable to the channel
@@GabyGeorge1996 kind of my point
John Lasher touché
As it should be. Passion will keep you driven for decades
Going straight from VantaBlack to showing Stuart Semple's Pinkest Pink and Diamond Dust was a move of pure classiness.
Now i get it, that is pure comedy genius
@@jezusmylord Stuart Semple is the definition of classy kiss my ass
Omg yess I laughed at this so hard and my family looked at me weird
â@jezusmylord i might be stupid but whats the joke?
@@The-Silliest-Little-Guy Iirc, Anish Kapoor is an artist who bought the sole right to use the vantablack pigment, so in retaliation Stuart Semple (also an artist) created the pinkest pink and made it available for everyone EXCEPT Kapoor. Semple said he'd make pinkest pink available to Kapoor only when he allows other people to use vantablack. Semple also created diamond dust, which is supposed to be the most shiniest glitter.
Haha, just had to get that shot of pinkest pink just after vantablack.
Just wait.... someone will try to market pink nanotubes for 'lady-scientists'
@@bookslug2919 You are not getting the point... ^_~
@@jorgeamadosoriaramirez8953 No need to google it, just watch Tom's video on it.^^
Not just that, but Diamond "Put Your Finger in This" Dust.
I was afraid the video wouldn't include shots of stuart semple's colors, but they did!
colour exist
artist: *gotta catch them all*
PETA: colors must be free!
*gotta shade them all*
now I just have to make a game about this.
怩ćMark Iâm gonna be the KARAA MASTAA!!
i am an artist, i can confirm
Glad to see Stuart's Pinkest Pink in there.
I like that they showed them right after mentioning Vantablack.
I imagine he'd get a giggle out of that positioning
glad im not the only one who's glad
Imagine dying, being mummified, and then thousands of years later, getting mushed up and put on a canvas.
Thereâs donating your body to science, and then thereâs whatever this is...
Donating your body to art?
I don't think it could be called "donating" in general, I doubt anybody thought to ask them for informed consent for paint-making in their lifetimes.
Well, it's not as bad as being eaten as medicine which happened in Europe during the 12th to 16th century.
Do you mean dyeing?
I want to know how the idea of using mummified remains as a pigment in a paint came about....
Did someone dig up a body for some other reason and think, "that is a really nice color."?
"When I was 18, i sloppily said: I rather collect colors then go to work"
...
"50 years later, here I am, at this University.
I am the Master of Colors and Pigmentresearch."
You're still sloppy. :o)
Cap
@@Tom_Ridpath_lover_1 r/ wooosh
â€â€â€
@@name89452 What does cap mean and how did they miss a joke?
My favorite part of this video is seeing Stuart Semple's color creations featured immediately after the Anish Kapoor owned "Vanta-Black." If you're not aware of the awesomely petty but insanely entertaining feud between the two, please look it up.
came here looking for this, was not disappointed
i can't recall if this one came out before or after but Tom did an interview with Stuart regarding the feud and Pinkest Pink
@@TS6815 that was about two years (2017) before this (2019)
good reaction by Mr. Semple. Quite unethical for Mr. Kapoor to get exclusive access to it, unless it is only for a reasonably short period of time (certainly no more than a decade)
@@MH_VOID and this is exactly why I am against patents
I study chemistry and one of the best things is when your product turns a colour you have never seen. I had a liquid that was red from the top and green from the side, turns out it was the Tyndall effect.
I have a fountain pen ink that works something like that. It's a green ink with a red sheen. Jacques Herbin 1670 Anniversary Emerald de Chivor. It also shimmers gold
Pthalocyanine blue was invented by chance. My dad once worked with the ICI scientist that discovered it. Monastral blue. An enamel dish had a crack in it which turned bright blue when holding a solution.
Tyndall... TO THE GOOGLEMOBILE! It definitely rings a bell but Chemistry is definitely my weakest science. :P Anything I should know that google won't tell me? Thank you for this knew knowledge.
EDIT: Oh, yay! Structural colour! Butterfly wings and irises and biological photo-physics! (as I'm sure you already know) I probably heard of it around cuttlefish or chameleons. Now I have a fun fact: the vast majority of blues in the animal world are not pigment colour; they're structural colour. That's still real colour, of course (eat it, NatGeo), but it's all down to processes like the Tyndall effect instead of simple pigment-based absorption-vs-reflection.
makes me think of the shiny bits on US $10s and $20s that's iridescent because of copper particles
@@clockworkkirlia7475 Huh. I heard of it in relation to Japanese toilet humour.
Someone else was commenting on vantablack that it was especially odd when it was on crinkled aluminum foil; it absorbs light so well that the foil looks flat because how it looks doesn't depend on the angle of the surface. It looks like a hole in reality or a rendering error rather than a paint color.
Someone had painted a ping pong ball with it and it looked like a hole in the Space-Time continuum when they held it up.
mummie brown = ground up mummie
baby oil = ground up b..... wait what
Baby Oil is distilled Baby. Put them into a pressure cooker, and tap the resulting distillate.
Oh but its only late-term aborted fetuses
@@cesariojpn Baby powder on the other hand...
I laughed. Am I bad person?
Fred Austere no, we are terrible people
Stuart Semple's pink is really the pinkest pink I've ever seen (4:36), and is worth buying just to make pink things at home
It's insanely cheap as well, so it's worth investing in!
I bought his pink and yellow just to see it in person. Camera doesn't do it justice
Awesome video.
Oof
Sup, Destin!
seems like the algorithm chose me to watch this video now
k
Hi destin
I am fascinated by the extinction of Quinacridone Gold. It was discontinued as an artist grade pigment in 2018, as the automotive industry simply stopped using it, and it was no longer available to artists. Artists are a small percentage of the consumers of pigment and we simply get what other industries need.
PO49 stopped being used at the turn of the century in the automotive world, so it took almost 2 decades for the majority of the remaining supply to be used up. It's still available as a pigment, it just isn't commercially used to produce paint anymore, likely due to it being cost prohibitive to obtain in large quantities.
Chemistry lab storage + Art gallery. Interesting.
SO IS THE SUNLIGHT BRIGHTENING UP THE ROOM.
Putting vantablack under a reflective glass plate kinda defeats it's purpose, doesn't it?
Who would win? The world's blackest black, or the world's mirrorest mirror?
There's a portion of it that isn't covered by the glass as seen in the video... I think
Not if you don't want people to start touching it.
@@JNCressey u mean 'one mirror boi'?
Not really. Glass reflects quite a bit specularly, but it exhibits basically no diffuse illumination (because that light gets transmitted instead).
"We have 60 different samples of Hematite"
How awesome would it be if they eventually got a Hematite sample from Mars to add to the collection after some astronaut decides "Hey, I'm going to paint something out of paint I make myself"
Hematite from Mars would probably be very abrasive, so not a good pigment. There are also probably many types of Martian hematites just like on Earth (well, technically Earth has a more diverse geology so not as many, but you get the point).
Of course it's still cool if you can say something was painted with Martian pigments.
Wonder if you can turn the moons regolith in to pigment, luner gray,
@@vladolkhovetsky1070 One of the former Apollo astronauts Alan Bean painted pictures using moon dust and Apollo spacecraft parts
@vlad olkhovetsky
They did that in the video game âPortal 2â
@@Abdega "The bean counters told me we literally could not afford to buy seven dollars worth of moon rocks, much less seventy million. Bought 'em anyway. Ground 'em up, mixed em into a gel. And guess what? Ground up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill."
- Cave Johnson
when you're not sure if you want to major in chemistry or art so you just do both
Having a shot of Stuart Semple's "exclusive" dyes seconds after the bit on Vantablack was a class act that you may well never top, Tom.
Well done.
I have a weird obsession with color and pigment, and this video was heaven for me
isaac grandas Me too :)
Yup, this is Color Mecca for me.
If I keep using egg tempra, I'm afraid I'll get that obsession.
i have been painting & drawing a lot most of my life, so same... I clicked on this video really fast
Same⊠I got really giddy when I saw the title of this video
Tom, while you are at Harvard you might enjoy visiting the *Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants* (aka *Glass Flowers*). Itâs one of those âhas to be seen to be believedâ things, pictures donât do it justice. Amazing in detail, artistry, and scope, itâs both a teaching tool and a stunning artistic achievement.
Agree...that collection is remarkable!
I've seen these! They are truly lovely!
It' so remarkable it's verges on ordinary. I was there a few years back and they are so perfect the collection starts looking like a room filled with random grasses. I also love those crystal rooms nearby. Wish I could see this collection.
@@stevepeaple9051 I will have to remember the phrase âso remarkable [that it] verges on ordinary.â I definitely get what you are saying there!
As a graphic designer for 23 years, the colors in this video took my breath away- I stopped it and took about 100 screen shots! Iâm so very happy there are people who have preserved this part of history, and those who continue to develop new material for us all to share. What a neat video, Thank you.
You never got into gouache or its close relative, watercolour? It seems to be the primary medium for graphic design, so it's strange to me that you'd be new to any of these colours.
â@@mydogeatspukein Graphic design, we studied different things, this knowledge is more related to fine art or illustration maybe.
@@amozinshade484 gouache is very popular if not THE standard in graphic design, and all of these colours are very prominent in that medium, as I already said.
@@mydogeatspuke Seriously? If you don't realize that other countries didn't have access to gouache or even the fact fine art knowledge hasn't been accessible, you lucked out. Again all you needed was at least decent quality paint and in my case it was acrylics, of course we learned color theory but pigment knowledge is again not really covered, probably mentioned but not really. When I studied graphic design it is mostly digital stuff, and a lot to deal with printing.
@@amozinshade484 đđđđđ all countries have access to gouache, stop being silly. Gouache is not a fine art material. Digital graphic design is incredibly modern, so all you're really doing is saying that you're too young to know anything about anything and that upsets you. Hardly my problem. Simmer down.
I recommend reading 'Secret Lives of Colour' by Kassia St Clair if anyone wants to read about origins and uses of some of the most popular and influential colours.
I just put it on hold at my local library. I should be able to pick it up soon. Thanks for the recommendation! I've been looking for some new, interesting reading material.
Mummy Brown is people!
funnily enough, brown people
is Soylent Green a shade of green? It better be or I'll be disappointed
Interestingly that's said to be the reaction many people had to learning this news. Iirc artists knew, but the public was horrified, and that stymied the sale of "mummy brown" from that point forward.
I love a good obscure movie reference, especially when I get the joke. đ
When you didnât have a skin color colored pencil:
thanks to Tom Scott for my win in a pub quiz last week, one of the questions was on mummy-based pigments, another about the 1904 olympic marathon (from citation needed). Couldn't have done it without him
When I see old blue pigment what can I think about is only how expensive they are
@LagiNaLangAko23 it's crazy expensive back then
Sure, look at the raw material and process of making it. Cobalt is not a soft material.
Purple was even more expensive
@@KamuiPan Ultramarine Blue has no cadmium in it. It is made by grinding up Lapis Lazuli gemstones from Afghanistan. Then as now, going to Afghanistan was bad for your health (for exactly the same reasons).
This is amazing, I could spend countless days glancing around there at all the colors, knowing they all have their own story behind them. Its fascinating, we should cherish things like this and the people that do those jobs.
I'm thinking about their practical uses, there are so many models I could use.
Nice to see some Kremer Pigmente 3:47 on their shelves, too. Amazing company making pigments in Bavaria, Germany.
Props to the editor who put the B-roll of Pinkest Pink and Diamond Dust in right after talking about Vantablack. Brilliant!
I used to custom match paint colors manually (as opposed to using a color sensor and having a computer make the formula) for a couple paint stores and i fell in love with it! this collection is absolute heaven!! wow, i can only imagine the colors my monitor cant show accurately....
As an artist, it's amazing to look at the differences in consistently and how paint changes over time. It's fascinating that we now have things like the Pantone charts and grading to get exact shades and variations. Furthermore, there are modern digital tools that try and copy traditional looks and textures of classical mediums. However, I don't think we've gotten to the point where we can simulate the exact outcomes. We can only get close to it.
Tom you never cease to amaze in finding bizarre yet fascinating places
I love this video, this is a perfect example of the things that matter out in the world in their own way that you shine light on Tom. Loving it.
My favourite field: the chemistry of colour! Specially form a historical point of view!
it was a great pleasure to get closer than the average museum goer to this collection and see real deal what i'm working with as a painter. glad you got that opportunity as well, and put it up on youtube for the world to see.
Imagine how annoying an Earthquake would be there.
0:01 i personally think of colors as how they are made through the combination of red yellow and blue watercolor paints. as i went to a waldorf school when i was younger and thats how they taught color
3:20 *looks at a shade of brown on a canvas* "Are you my mummy?"
Burnt Umber - one of my favourite colours when a kid in school - I now live a few miles from one place they used to make it and worked in the building for a short while - long after the furnace had been removed though. Fascinating stuff!
I work at an art supply store with some high end specialty paints, and one of my favorite things to do to demonstrate the difference between lead oils and non lead oils is have customers hold a tube of a modern paint, and then hand them a tube of red lead
so what's the difference?
@@Khunark in terms of how the paint itself paints the difference is really in things like flexibility and achievability, but the reason i have people hold the two tubes side by side is to feel the weight. the tubes with lead in them are SIGNIFICANTLY heavier than those without.
Anish Kapoor is *S* *H* *A* *K* *I* *N* *G*
Who is that sounds like a famous chess player.
@@ricchburglar Some guy who stole the Pinkest Pink pigment, after the guy who made the P.P. pigment got jealous at him becaude Anish got to have Vantablack (one of the darkest blacks) and the P.P. creator didn't.
@@sciblastofficial9833 Anish stole the (at the time) blackest pigment from the artistic community as a whole. The greedy bastard.
@@fomalhaut_the_great how? Its an expensive pigment to make and used for aeronautics. Thats like complaining Apple is greedy for trademarking something they made
it's one of my dearest dreams to see a new colour
I love all the interesting topics and places you she's with us, Tom. It's fun but also educational without talking to us like we are children.
You have a great channel. Love from the Netherlands.
Thanks for this awesome video! I am a painter and I live in Boston. Iâve been to this exhibit before, but only a small amount of pigments are out of display, the vast majority are too far away to be really observed, so this video was a treat! Thank you.
As an artist i found this both fascinating and delightful đ thanks for spotlighting this! đ
This is one of those exhibits I never would've sauntered into on my own accord, but Tom manages to put it in an interesting light.
5 stars, Tom đ
3:03
Talks about lead white.
Me, eyeing the dragon's blood.
This was amazing. Thank you Tom and Mr Khandekhar!
Him: âMummy brown is made up from crushed Egyptian mummies.â
Me: Hmmm interesting
Also him: âIndian yellow...â
Me: absolutely disgusting..
Baby blue "crush up ba...
.
When the supply of ancient mummys ran out some people made their own, for the profits.
Let that sink in.
if theres an 'Indian Brown' it'd obviously be the aftermath of cheap indian food
The pinkest pink better be in this
How's the blacker Vantablack?
4:37 I think
Don't forget about the yellowest yellow, greenest green and loveliest blue
It is! They have most of Stuarts stuff in there. As randomizednamme pointed out you can see two of his pigments at 4:37.
Had to have the diamond dust it's a girl's best friend
I swear, these Tom Scott videos from 3 years ago literally just spawn in every day
OMG! That was freaking awesome! Thank you for sharing this with us âŁïž
So, is the gallery UV shielded? Obviously part of it is understanding how they age, but it still feels like that might compromise their practical use to some degree.
Meris I was thinking the same. Thought someone else had written a comment about it, and I was right :)
Doubt that part of the gallery is within the light source. Even then, it is behind several layers of glass. At that point, most of the UV should of been filtered/diminished greatly in strength.
IT LOOKED LIKE IT WAS LINED WITH WINDOW WITH SUNLIGHT BEAMING IN.
All the light in the gallery is UV filtered. These pigments have been blasted by light for decades and only the thinnest edge where the light reaches the pigment is affected. If you take the lid off the containers you can see that most of the pigment is unaffected, so we get a sample of both the degraded and original material for analysis.
1:34
A "what Arabic"?!
That caught me off-guard.
Tom thank you for your videos. In the depressing times we have to deal with it is nice to see a video on how fascinating our world is.
Thank you for coming to our city! I hope you enjoyed exploring the Harvard Art Museum and the other museums in the area, artistic and scientific.
This was way more interesting than I expected it to be.
I wonder if there's a scientific way to describe/define a certain color. A way that doesn't uses references to certain materials that are dissolving over time, but actualy physical constants.
So even if the original color/pigment is dissolved over time, you can reproduce the color exactly the same, even though the materials used are not the same.
That would probably be the hex code.
No, there isnât. Because vision and color detection inherently has a lot of variation
@@aaronisnotalive The hex code is a 32bit simplification of a color which doesn't include any info about reflectivity, opacity, vibrancy etc.
e.g. gold, silver, bronze and other shiny colors can't be described in hex.
I would imagine not, but even if the pigment is faded and gone, you can use the original materials to make more of the pigment.
@@lemons1559 "original material" is a subjective/changing definition as well.
You don't get the pulver for "mummy brown" nowadays anymore and several other materials changed over time due to different purification and synthesis methods.
1:38 I love the way the building and sorting is arranged.
I love learning where colored pigment comes from. Thanks so much!
I highly recommend âThe Secret Lives of Colorâ by Kassia St. Clair. It talks all about the history and invention of pigments like these. Itâs really fascinating.
The best thing that I've learned from this video is that the Archive of Colours are like books that can be taken out of the display cases and can be studied/ used for reference. I thought those were just for display.
bluzshadez Yep, specialist research libraries can end up collecting all sorts of things! There are other libraries out there that collect various chemical compounds for people to do assays and chemical analysis on.
@@PurpleShift42 Thanks for sharing information. I grew up with the notion that Libraries are only for books and other printed materials, movies, vinyl, etc. I learned something new today. God bless!
I love that this isn't just a static display but is used in research and reference. I might have to head out to see this museum one of these days now that I'm back in Massachusetts
The Harvard Art Museums are incredible. Definitely worth a trip up to Boston/Cambridge just to visit. They often get overshadowed by NYCâs museums, but are wholly unique (this pigment collection being just one of the many specialties).
This is wonderful. If you want to learn more about the histories of pigments, I recommend The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St. Clair.
As a partial colorblind I'm actually quite curious to how they all actually look on our eyes...
Me too!
Depending on your type of colour blindness, some people have had great results with enchroma glasses, which can help to give an idea about how the rest of us see colours.
Something about this whole collection is really inspiring
Can we please take a moment to appreciate the pixels that are displaying the colour?
If some of them are sensitive to light... then shouldn't they be stored in a darker room?
This was certainly a colourful video. :D
hue are nice
Sends mum to whack with an umbrella
I would definitely attend a display of these colours and the materials used to make them, it's so fascinating!
I was waiting for the reference to Stuart Semple, and was pleased to see that his pigments were briefly included.
Would have thought every shade of colour imaginable would have been discovered. Especially in the digital age. Great to be educated on something new. Thank you.
Oh no, people are still discovering, creating and working towards pigments. Itâs not always a new colour they find but rather a pure hue, or a more stable and light fast one.
Fun fact uranium was used as a green pigment back in the 1800s.
It was used as an orange pigment (in pottery glazes) until the 1950s!
Fabulous! Thanks very much for sharing this, Tom Scott :D
Very interesting! Even thought I can only name about 12 colors.
Start with the ones at the beginning of a Bob Ross video, that'll give you a good jumping point! :D
Get your Titanium Hwhite
Phthalo Blue.
Creamy Pasta Good pun!đ€Ł
"This beautifully painted winter scene smells like sh*t!"
well, y'see, the brown used for the wood of the tree is... well...
Amaizing! Finally saw something worth remembering for life today...
I could probably spend a whole day looking at the pigment collection.
Another great and interesting video. Never wondered how they judged forgery from authentic in the art world :)
This was a nice colour piece about Harvard
Incredible. They should do some kind of public exhibition to show what they are doing. It would be so interesting.
4:45 If your boss ever accuse you of slacking off, you reming him that this dude was paid for FOUR MONTHS to line up bottles on a shelf.
"Lead white is toxic in the same way that lead is... toxic"
Me: *_"Well yes, but actually _**_-no-_**_ yes."_*
Willing to explain? Now I'm really curious :)
Tom, if you haven't, you should do an episode on how/why magenta isn't a 'real' color... Its a fascinating perspective on color theory;
This was absolutely fascinating! This place is now on my must-see list.
This museum is so cool. Really want a documentary series to explain all the colors and their origins
Halfway through I started thinking this was an Objectivity video
How very colourful. (Also love how autocorrect highlights colour as incorrect)
Ketsueki Kumori the autocorrect occurs because it defaults to the American spelling of the English words. So colour becomes color, armour becomes armor, and so on. Quite frankly itâs rather aggravating
Honestly, you can't trust the Americans to build anything properly! ;D
Just change your autocorrect language to literally any variety of English but American. Colour is the correct spelling everywhere else.
@@ginismoja2459 *any variety of English but Simplified.
@@Hannah_Em Just look at 9/1... maybe too inappropriate of a joke.
that is perfectly encapsuling the beauty of knowledge I never imagined to want to know but now that Ive seen it, find super interesting and want to see for myself some day
I just binge watched every Tom Scott video and Iâve finally made it to the most recent
Just waiting for someone to discover ocatrine.
I somehow forget these pigments have to be made by things, they don't just happen. How amazing.
I'd gladly spend hours there, just to look at the coours and learn about the ancient pigments. It's so fascinating. Pity is not open to the public.
Cool! You always show me things I hadnât even thought of as something people need.
"Chemical duplicates, but not colour duplicates"? Surely if it's they're chemically identical they'd be the same colour...? Am I missing something?
psammiad they can be chemically the same, but external factors made them a slightly different shade (like how pressure and heat can turn coal into diamonds, even though they are both pure Carbon)
Even how finely a pigment is ground can affect the shade.
@@graypetcoyle A bit of a bad example since the different allotropes of carbon aren't chemically identical due to different structures.
I worked in an factory making ink, we had drums of pigments, some of the deepest purest colors! one day a co worker dropped the scoop used for removing pigments, dropped in in the drum, a cloud of bright blue pigment rose up, his face and upper body a nice deep blue. He was sent home to shower.