A purple barium copper silicate pigment from early China

1992/08/01 by Elisabeth West FitzHugh, Lynda A. Zycherman · 4 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Cultural Heritage Materials Analysis

paper · doi:10.1179/sic.1992.37.3.145

crossref issued 1992/08/01 · crossref published 1992/08/01 · crossref published-print 1992/08/01 · openalex publication_date 1992/08/01 · crossref published-online 2013/07/19 · crossref created 2014/01/09 · crossref deposited 2016/12/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/08/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02

Abstract

A purple barium copper silicate, BaCuSi206, an artificial inorganic pigment, has been identified, sometimes mixed with the known blue barium copper silicate, BaCuSi4O10. It occurs on- painted objects and in octagonal sticks from China attributed to the Han dynasty (208 Be-AD 220). This man-made pigment, for which the name Han purple is proposed, has not been previously characterized.

Citations

• An early man-made blue pigment from China—barium copper silicate

Cited by

• Historical Pigments: A Survey of Analytical Chemical Archaeometric Usage and Terminology for Forensic Art Analysis
• Influence of Taoism on the invention of the purple pigment used on the Qin terracotta warriors
• Mineral Pigments in Archaeology: Their Analysis and the Range of Available Materials
• Dimensional reduction at a quantum critical point