Dear acmehardware,
Thank you for your question!
The usage of paint is known since antiquities. However, only in the
late 19th century, paint began to be sold commercially, as a mixture.
Before that, we could see that in a passage about the ancient
Egyptians:
“Ancient painted walls, to be seen at Dendara, Egypt, although exposed
for many ages to the open air, still possess a perfect brilliancy of
colour, as vivid as when painted, perhaps 2000 years ago. The
Egyptians mixed their colours with some gummy substance, and applied
them detached from each other without any blending or mixture. They
appeared to have used six colours, viz., white, black, blue, red,
yellow, and green. They first covered the field entirely with white,
upon which they traced the design in black, leaving out the lights of
the ground colour. They used minium for red, and generally of a dark
tinge.
Pliny mentions some painted ceilings in his day in the town of Ardea,
which had been executed at a date prior to the foundation of Rome. He
expresses great surprise and admiration at their freshness, after the
lapse of so many centuries. “
("Paint", From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia,
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint>).
Later, instead of different types of dirt and ground, gum arabic began
to introduce to painting. This is used to thicken watercolours also
today; as well as in Gouache paint (for artists and children). (See
more about this period at "Technique of Egyptian Painting", Ancient
Worlds of Egypt, and <http://www.ancientsites.com/aw/Post/168525>).
By the 1700s, wooden artefacts and also sometimes walls began to be
painted using oil formulas (see for example: Holkham Linseed Paints,
<http://www.holkham.co.uk/linseedpaints/>). Linseed formulas became
more and more popular, and contributed to the spread of painting of
private houses and mansions.
About a century later, the usage of lead-oil mixture (which results in
white colour) in paint began, which dominated house painting until the
mid-20th century, when lead was found to be poisoning. However, as
mentioned before, in the popular level, it was only the late 19th
century, early 20th century, when lead was used in private houses, and
not only in mansions and palaces:
“The first usage of lead paint was in the early 1900s. It was a good
paint that held colour longer than other paints. In 1950, the paint
industry voluntarily reduced the level of lead in paint. Then, in
1978, a law went into effect that further reduced the amount of lead
allowable in paint, and made it a mandatory standard. The law states
that lead in paint or other surface coverings cannot be equal to or
more than one milligram per square centimetre or .5 percent by
weight.” (Pat Hiban, “Lead: A Silent But Hazardous Household Word”,
http://www.bizmonthly.com/3_1997_focus/hiban.html).
With the development of the chemical industry, new colours and paints
- based on polymeric (plastic) materials, began to appear. Today, they
dominant the market.
Further Reading: A slightly funny history of house painting: "Do
people prefer to mix their own?"
http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/paint/
Search terms used:
["paint" "gum arabic was used"]
["paint" "gum arabic"]
["lead paint" "was introduced"]
[paint "was first used"]
[paint "the first usage of"]
I hope this answered your question. Please contact me if you need any
clarification on this answer before you tip/rate it. |
