 |
| Photo: Studio Laura Daza |
While studying Egyptian history and historical
pigments I found an incredible and scary story behind one of these
pigments. Mummy brown, Egyptian mummy or
caput mortuum, which means dead head in
latin, was a pigment favoured by Pre-Raphaelite painters.
Literally
it derives from its source; Egyptian mummies, both human and animal, which were
ground up and mixed with myrrh and pitch.
The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of
English poets; painters founded in 1948 rejected the accepted style of painting
that idealised nature and beauty, forming a secret society, through which they
hoped to revitalise Britain’s painting.
Mummy
Brown
‘The
corpse pigment’
Etymology:
mummia
Source:
animal/mummy
Historical
name: Egyptian brown, caput mortuum
Colour
range: greenish brown to a burnt umber transparent
 |
| Photo: Kkgas for Studio Laura Daza |
In
1904 C. Roberson, an English colour maker company made a post “We require a mummy for making colour.
Surely a 2,000-year-old mummy of an Egyptian monarch may be used for adorning a
noble fresco . . . without giving offence to the ghost of the departed
gentlemen or his descendants” (Woodcock, 1996).
 |
| Photos: Harvard Art Musuem online 01. Egyptian mummy dealer 02. Mummy fragment 03. Mummy powder 04. Mummy brown paint |
-->
The
export of mummies from Egypt to Europe increased tremendously during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries becoming big business even though it was
illegal. Mummy powder or mummeia was
mass-produced in shops across Europe used by apothecaries for medicinal
purposes, applied to the skin or mixed to drinks and food and for painting.
 |
| Photo: Katya de Grunwald for Studio Laura Daza |
‘An early mention of mummy as a
colourant occurs in Shakespeare’s Othello, in reference to the colour of a silk
handkerchief (1602-04). It also appears that mummy was used as an oil paint as
early as the close of the sixteenth century’. (Walsh and Chaplin, 2008) It can
be said painters prized this pigment for its novelty and aesthetic qualities,
good transparency able to mix with other colours. Martin
Drölling’s L’interieur d’une cuisine from
1815 is thought to contain extensive amounts of mummy.
 |
| Photo: Kkgas for Studio Laura Daza |
The colour’s popularity and practice did not end until the 1960’s when paint companies ran out of mummies, bad press and material instability. Today modern and synthetic pigments are available in the market such as Indian red and Caput mortuum but will never have the same provenance.
Experimenting with Mummy Brown was a difficult task. Sourcing materials that could have been available to painters during that time and simulating processes was a complete challenge to me.
If you are interested in learning more about this colour, you may buy our DIY Colour Recipe Book, the printed or ebook version here.
