Image of the Day: Open

Emerald Green or Paris Green, the Deadly Regency Pigment

via jane austin's world
“Once upon a time green paint literally killed people. In 1814 in Schweinfurt, Germany, two men named Russ and Sattler tried to improve on Scheele’s green, a paint made with copper arsenite. The result was a highly toxic pigment called emerald green. Made with arsenic and verdigris, the bright green color became an instant favorite with painters, cloth makers, wall paper designers, and dyers…”
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Deconstructing the Color Wheel

via neatorama
The colors we use today have fascinating origins based in treachery, lust, and mythology. Find out more as Mental Floss (via Neatorama) deconstructs the color wheel. Next time you use green, remember that pigment maker Carl Wilhem Scheele died of arsenic poisoning.
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Odd Color Names Offer a Primer in Marketing

via nytimes

“If you heard the words “Tempest,’ ‘Turbulence’ and ‘Tornado Watch,’ you might head for the basement — fast. Paint manufacturers want you to head for the living room. In a redoubled effort to capture consumers’ attention in this sputtering economic recovery, some paint companies are hoping to distinguish their brands with names that tell a story, summon a memory or evoke an emotion — even a dark one — as long as they result in a sale. What they do not do is reveal the color…”

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Why Are Barns Red?

via the daily heller

“In American Barns and Covered Bridges (Dover Publications, 2003), Eric Sloane notes  that weather was an important consideration in planning a barn. The early builder mapped routes of sunshine, wind and water drainage. He paid careful attention to the health and comfort of his animals, as well as to the protection and preservation of barn timbers and stored grain. Early 18th-century bridges and barns went unpainted. The right wood in the right place, it was discovered, needed no paint. Even houses in the earliest settlements were not painted. Until . . .

As Grit (the magazine you could make extra money selling in your spare time) points out: ‘By the late 1700s, the art of wood seasoning gave way to the art of artificial preservation. Virginia farmers were the first to become paint-conscious. In Pennsylvania, the Dutch settlements latched on to the custom of red bricks, red barns, red geraniums, even reddish-brown cows.’

Red paint combined with linseed oil was also used to prevent certain organisms from decaying the wood. But there is more lore…”

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