Red Lead/Minium
Another early synthetic pigment, red lead was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans. An easy pigment to manufacture using lead cakes, animal dung and a closed container, red lead became a standard for artists as well as the entire paint industry. Red lead came to the Americas on English sailing vessels; the English liked to paint the decks of their ships with red lead because it hid blood spilled in warfare and piracy. Used by house (and barn) painters in America for centuries, red lead was the primary red exterior paint clear up into the 1970’s when lead paint was finally banned in the US.
Red lead was adapted into Native American palettes, sometimes with catastrophic effects. A group of archaeologists working an Omaha Indian village site opened up a mass grave from the 1800’s. In the grave were the remains of more than a dozen people of all ages including children, and remnants of red paint. Examination of the skeletons revealed no evidence of disease or damage and scientists were puzzled by why these people had all died at the same time. It was not until someone realized that these people, unknowingly, had painted themselves and their families with poisonous red lead paint for a ceremony that they figured out what had happened.
An unstable color, red lead can darken or turn white depending on environmental factors and the binder used. Eventually fugitive, red lead has disappeared on many NW Coast objects leaving the secondary fields as if they had never been painted. This inspired the infrared imaging study on which red paint was no longer visible by Bill McLennan and Karen Duffek, of the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology that resulted in the book “The Transforming Image”. Using infrared photography, McLennan and Duffek were able to reveal the fugitive paint which showed up as white and revealed the lost images.
Red lead is extremely toxic and is no longer manufactured.
Red lead was adapted into Native American palettes, sometimes with catastrophic effects. A group of archaeologists working an Omaha Indian village site opened up a mass grave from the 1800’s. In the grave were the remains of more than a dozen people of all ages including children, and remnants of red paint. Examination of the skeletons revealed no evidence of disease or damage and scientists were puzzled by why these people had all died at the same time. It was not until someone realized that these people, unknowingly, had painted themselves and their families with poisonous red lead paint for a ceremony that they figured out what had happened.
An unstable color, red lead can darken or turn white depending on environmental factors and the binder used. Eventually fugitive, red lead has disappeared on many NW Coast objects leaving the secondary fields as if they had never been painted. This inspired the infrared imaging study on which red paint was no longer visible by Bill McLennan and Karen Duffek, of the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology that resulted in the book “The Transforming Image”. Using infrared photography, McLennan and Duffek were able to reveal the fugitive paint which showed up as white and revealed the lost images.
Red lead is extremely toxic and is no longer manufactured.
