Tag: Arsenic

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Don’t lick your hands: Arsenic pigments used in 16-17th c. bookbinding

When working with historic texts, people are usually concerned about how they may harm the book, not how the book may harm them. Explore this post to learn about some 16-17th century books with potentially toxic components that were found in libraries at the Smithsonian Institute and the University of Southern Denmark. Continue reading Don’t lick your hands: Arsenic pigments used in 16-17th c. bookbinding

Gwen dePoloLeave a comment
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Deadly beautiful pigments: How arsenic sulfide pigment degradation affects the degradation of paintings

Historically, artists have used arsenic pigments, among other poisonous materials, since antiquity. Beautiful but deadly arsenic pigments were not only dangerous for the artists but also are dangerous for the objects: they can readily degrade and react with other components of the complex paint system, producing irreversible damage. Continue reading Deadly beautiful pigments: How arsenic sulfide pigment degradation affects the degradation of paintings

Diego Quintero-Balbás2 Comments