We take house paint for granted as a way to decorate our homes and protect surfaces against drying, rot, and the elements. Yet this seemingly simple product has a long, fascinating history – much too long and fascinating to summarize in just one essay. A brief history, however, is better than no history at all. 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.
40,000 thousand years 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, technology and new practices in house paint grew.
In this era of reality TV and manufactured celebrities, it can be hard to remember the definition of modesty. 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 oft-used process, called the “Dutch method,” mixed ground oyster shells and lime which made a white wash; iron or copper oxide for red or green color, respectively could then be added to the mix. Colonial paint “cooks” also used items from the pantry, including milk, egg whites, coffee, and rice, to turn out their illegal product.
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. 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 the time routinely fulfilled such requests, which seem fairly eccentric by today’s standards. In 1638, a historic home known as Ham House, located in Surrey, England, was renovated. Renovating the home was a multiple-step process, involving the usage of primer, a couple of undercoats, and a finishing coat of paint to show paneling and cornices in the home. 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. Before the 18th century, hand-grinding often exposed painters to an excess of white-lead powder, which could bring about 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. Painters did eventually add air extraction systems in their workshops to reduce the health risks occurring from grinding lead-based pigment. Not until 1978 did the U.S. finally ban the sale of lead house paint.
During the 1700s, paint production underwent a transformation. The first American paint mill opened in 1700 in Boston, Mass. 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 .”
As any steampunk aficionado will tell you, the turn of the 19th century meant the rise 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.
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 production 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. After all, paint made surfaces washable and, by sealing in wood’s natural oils, kept walls from becoming either too moist or too dry.
In 1866, a future titan of the paint business, Sherwin-Williams Paint, was born. 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 later, it added a research department powered by a single, lonely chemist. Ever since, Benjamin Moore has contributed amazing 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. American painter John Frost, who began his career as an artist in 1919, used house paint to chronicle the history of his hometown, the tiny village of Marblehead, Mass. Picasso and many of his contemporaries used it as well. 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. 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.
Interior painting has origins dating to pre-history.
Specifically, milk paint doesn’t have any volatile organic compounds, or 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 alternates are 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.
To the layman paint may seem simple and straight forward, however, 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.
