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.
In the beginning, cavemen would mix certain substances with animal fat to create paint; they would then use the paint to draw pictures and add colors on their walls. Red and yellow ochre, hematite, manganese oxide, and charcoal were all employed as color elements. Starting around 3150 B.C., ancient Egyptian painters mixed a base of oil or fat with color elements like ground glass or semiprecious stones, lead, earth, or animal blood. 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 era of real-time televsion and manufactured celebrities, it can be hard to remember the definition of modesty. For the Pilgrims, who populated the American colonies in the 17th century, modesty meant avoiding all displays of joy, wealth, 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.
Even colonial Puritanism, however, failed to silence the demand for house paint. 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.
Water and oil were the main bases for paint creation from the 17th century to the 19th. Each naturally held some colors more than others, and there were differences in the durability and coat, depending on which mixture was used. Ceilings and plaster walls generally called for water paints, while joinery demanded oils. Some homeowners wanted walls that looked like wood, marble, or bronze and ceilings that resembled a blue sky with puffy white clouds. Painters of the time routinely fulfilled such requests, which seem fairly eccentric by today's standards. Even in 1638, a historic home named "Ham House" 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. At this point in paint's evolution, pigment and oil were mixed by hand to make a stiff paste - a practice still employed today. If a pigment is well-ground, it should disperse almost entirely in oil. Unfortunately, before the 18th century, hand-grinding could expose painters to white-lead powder, which could result in lead poisoning. Even though lead paint was toxic, it was popular during this time because of its durability, and even today it's difficult to replicate that hardiness in paint. Fortunately, painters eventually added air extraction systems to their workshops, thus reducing the health risks of grinding lead-based pigment. Not until 1978 did the U.S. finally ban the sale of lead house paint.
Paint production transformed dramatically during the 1700s. The first American paint mill opened in 1700 in Boston, Mass. In 1718, the Englishman Marshall Smith devised a "Machine or Engine for the Grinding of Colours," which prompted a sort of arms race with regard to grinding pigment efficiently. 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. In fact, most paint mills during this time period 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.
By the end of the 1800s, roller mills had started to grind pigment as well as grain, and the guild system that had organized English house painters for centuries became a network of trade unions. Mass production of paint was once only a dream, but the production of linseed oil, a cheap binding agent that protected wood as well, made that dream come true.
It was in the 19th century that decorating a home with paint became the norm rather than an outlier. After all, paint made surfaces washable and, by sealing in wood's natural oils, kept walls from becoming either too moist or too dry.
Sherwin Williams, a giant behemoth in the paint world today, was founded in 1866. The company was the first maker of ready-to-use paint; its original product, raw umber in oil, debuted in 1873. Soon after that, cofounder Henry Sherwin developed a resealable tin can.
Another current industry heavyweight, Benjamin Moore, began operations in 1883. Twenty-four years passed, and the company created a research department headed up by one chemist. Since then, Benjamin Moore Paint has contributed a great deal to paint technology, but the company's color-matching system, unveiled in 1982 and entirely computer-based, is still considered by many to be its most noteworthy achievement in the 21st century, paint remains a formidable moneymaker; roughly $20.9 billion of the stuff was sold in 2006 alone.
House paint is most often applied to the surface of a residence, but artists have also used it on their canvases. 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 contemporary artists, like Nik Ehm, use house paint on occasion.
In the middle of the 20th century, necessity became the mother of invention for the increasingly innovative paint industry. World War II led to a dearth of linseed oil, so chemists combined alcohols and acids to make alkyds, artificial resins that could 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.
commercial painting has origins dating to the industrial revolution.
To be specific, milk paint doesn't contain volatile organic compounds, commonly known as VOCs. Latex paint, however, does contain VOCs, making them potentially dangerous to pets and humans. Extended exposure to VOCs can lead to organ or nerve damage, and some may be carcinogenic. Thankfully, most paint companies have low or zero VOC paint available. By EPA standards, the term, "zero-VOC," means that each liter of paint has less than 5 grams of VOCs. Other non-VOC options include clay- and water-based paints. If you suffer from allergies, you must used low-VOC paint. In fact, they offer practical advantages no matter what your circumstances, since their lack of strong odor lets you occupy freshly painted rooms relatively soon.
While paint is seemingly simplistic, it has evolved over the centuries to our financial, health, and aesthetic 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 time it's traveled to add a little beauty to your life.