Lake pigment

A Lake pigment is a pigment manufactured by precipitating a dye with an inert binder, usually a metallic salt. Manufacturers and suppliers to artists and industry frequently omit the lake designation in the name. Many lake pigments are fugitive, because the dyes involved are unstable when exposed to light.

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The metallic salt or binder used must be very inert and insoluble in the vehicle, and it must be white or very neutral. It must have low tinting strength, so that the dye itself determines which wavelengths are absorbed and reflected by the resulting precipitate. In ancient times, chalk, white clay, and crushed bones were used, sources of calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate. The salts that are commonly used today include barium sulfate, calcium sulfate, aluminum hydroxide, and aluminum oxide (alumina), all of which can be produced cheaply from inexpensive mineral ores.

Lake pigments have a long history in decoration and the arts. Some have been produced for thousands of years, and traded over long distances.

• Indigo Lake, was originally produced from the leaves of woad, and was known in ancient Egypt. In the late Middle Ages, a fashion for woad as a textile dye led to overplanting and soil exhaustion in many parts of Europe. After trade routes opened to the east, Indigo was imported from India as a substitute for woad, and the cultivation of woad became uneconomical in Europe. Today, the dark blue dye once produced from woad is known as Indigo. The dye and pigment are both fugitive. ^[1]

• Rose Madder Lake, originally from the root of the madder plant, is also known as Alizarin Crimson in its synthetic form. Since Rose Madder is fugitive when exposed to light, its use has been largely superseded, even in synthetic form, by Quinacridone pigments.

• Carmine Lake was originally produced from the cochineal insect, native to Central and South America. Another name is Crimson Lake. When the Spanish conquered the Aztec Empire (1518-1521), they encountered Aztec warriors garbed in an unknown crimson color. Cochineal became their second most valuable export from the New World, after silver, and they zealously guarded the secret of its production for centuries. ^[2] Carminic acid, the organic compound which gives carmine its color, was synthesized in 1991.

Indigo and Rose Madder are now produced more cheaply from synthetic sources, although some use of natural products persists, especially among artisans. The food and cosmetics industries have shown renewed interest in cochineal as a source of natural red dye.

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