Though house paint decorates our homes and protects their surfaces from rot, drying, and the elements, we often take it for granted. But this unassuming product does in fact have a long and interesting history which cannot be easily summarized. However, a short history of paint can be just as fascinating as the long version. In that spirit, we present a few snapshots of house paint's evolution in order to heighten your appreciation of it, and to provide some perspective on humans' need to secure and beautify their dwelling places.
Forty millennia ago, cave inhabitants combined various substances with animal fat to make paint, which they used to add pictures and colors to the walls of their crude homes. Hematite, manganese oxide, red and yellow ochre, and charcoal were used as "paint". Ancient Egyptian painters mixed an oil or fat base with color elements like semiprecious stones, ground glass, earth, animal blood, or lead around 3150 B.C. These ancient peoples preferred black, white, red, blue, green, and yellow. In England, around the turn of the 14th century, house painters started guilds that established standards for their profession and kept trade secrets secret. By the 17th century, new practices and technologies were shaking up the world of house paint even more.
In this time of constantly documented celebrity misconduct, some may not even remember what modesty was. In the 17th century, the Pilgrims, who populated the American colonies, believed that modesty was the avoidance of all displays of wealth, joy, or vanity. Even painting your home was deemed very immodest and highly sacrilegious. In 1630, a rebellious Charlestown preacher decorated his house's interior with paint and was thus brought up on criminal charges of sacrilege.
This colonial Puritanism could not stop the demand for house paint, though. Anonymous authors wrote "cookbooks" that offered recipes for various kinds and colors of paint. One popular process, known as the Dutch method, combined lime and ground oyster shells to make a white wash, to which iron or copper oxide – for red or green color, respectively – could be added. These Colonial paint "cooks" often used food items like egg whites, milk, rice, and coffee.
From the 17th century until the 19th, oil and water were the primary bases for paint production. Each naturally held some colors more than others, and there were differences in the durability and coat, depending on which mixture was used. Water-based paints were used for ceilings and plaster walls, and oils were used for joinery. Some homeowners wanted walls that looked like wood, marble, or bronze and ceilings that resembled a blue sky with puffy white clouds. Painters of this period would fulfill these requests. In 1638, a historic home known as Ham House, located in Surrey, England, was renovated.The multi-step process involved the application of primer, an undercoat or two, and a finishing coat of paint to elaborate paneling and cornices throughout the house. During this time period in paint's evolutionary history, oil and pigment were hand-mixed to make a stiff paste, which is still done to this day. Well-ground pigment tends to disperse almost completely in oil. Before the 18th century, hand-grinding often exposed painters to an excess of white-lead powder, which could bring about lead poisoning. Despite its toxicity, lead paint was popular at the time due to its durability, which remains difficult to equal. Painters did eventually add air extraction systems in their workshops to reduce the health risks occurring from grinding lead-based pigment. The United States finally banned the usage of lead in house paint in 1978.
Paint production transformed dramatically during the 1700s. In 1700 in Boston, MA, the first American paint mill opened its doors. The Englishman Marshall Smith in 1718, created a "Machine or Engine for the Grinding of Colours," which created a competition between countries to grind pigment more effectively. In 1741, the English company Emerton and Manby publicized the "Horse-Mills" that it used to grind its pigment, thus allowing them to sell paint at unbeatable prices. Elizabeth Emerton, one of the owners, said, "One Pound of Colour ground in a Horse-Mill will paint twelve Yards of Work, whereas Colour ground any other Way, will not do half that Quantity ."
The turn of the 19th century brought about the reign of steam power. Paint mills were no inconsistency; at this point in time, most of them ran on steam. Nontoxic zinc oxide became a usable base for white pigment, thanks to the Europeans, during this time; it came to the US in 1855.
Roller mills had begun to grind pigment and grain by the end of the 1800s, and the guild system begun in England became a trade union network. Mass production of paint was once only a dream, but the synthesis of linseed oil, a cheap binding agent that protected wood as well, made that dream come true.
Decorating a home with paint became extremely popular in the 19th century. Paint did, after all, make surfaces easily washable and sealed in wood's natural oils; in doing so, it kept walls from being too wet or too dry.
Sherwin Williams, a giant behemoth in the paint world today, was founded in 1866. Sherwin Williams was the first manufacturer of ready-to-use paint, and its original product, raw umber in oil, came onto the market in 1873. Soon after that, cofounder Henry Sherwin developed a resealable tin can.
Benjamin Moore, one of Sherwin Williams top competitors, was born in 1883. Twenty-four years passed, and the company created a research department headed up by one chemist. Ever since, Benjamin Moore has contributed almost unbelievable discoveries in paint technology, but its color-matching system, unveiled in 1982 and wholly computer-based, is unmatched paint is still lucrative today; around $20.9 billion in paint was sold in 2006.
Though house paint is most frequently applied to the surfaces of a home, many artists have used it to bring their canvases to life. John Frost, an American painter who began his career in 1919, employed the use of house paint to paint the history of his hometown, a tiny village called Marblehead in Massachusetts. Picasso and some of his peers used house paint in their work. Even some modern artists, like Pollack admirer Nik Ehm, experiment with house paint as a medium.
Mid-20th century is when necessity became the mother of invention. The major conflict known as the Second world war contributed to the supply of linseed oil's demise, so chemists used a combination of alcohols and acids to create alkyds, artificial resins that are a substitute for natural oil.
Most house paint today is acrylic, or water-based, paint; however, milk paint, which reached the height of its popularity in the 19th century for its unassuming hues, is cropping up again thanks to the environmental movement.
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To be in depth, milk paint doesn't contain volatile organic compounds, commonly known as VOCs. Conventional latex paint, on the other hand, does contain them, which makes it potentially hazardous to humans and pets. If you're exposed to VOCs for an extended period of time, it could lead to nerve or organ damage, and it may even cause cancer. Thankfully, most paint companies have low or zero VOC paint available. The term "zero-VOC," by EPA standards, means that each liter of paint contains fewer than 5 grams of volatile compounds. Other non-VOC options include clay- and water-based paints. If you suffer from allergies, you must used low-VOC paint. Low VOC paints have great advantages no matter what the circumstances, because their relative lack of odor makes rooms livable faster.
Despite its outward simplicity, paint has adjusted over the millennium to conform to our aesthetic, financial, and health needs. That something so basic can allow us to express ourselves so strikingly, and elevate our mood so effectively, is almost a miracle. The next time you open a can of paint, consider how far through a long period it's traveled to add a little beauty to your life…