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Cobalt blue
 
 
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Cobalt blue is a cool, slightly desaturated blue color
Color

Color or colour is the visual perception property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue and others....
, historically made using cobalt
Cobalt

Cobalt is a hard, lustrous, grey metal, a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. Although cobalt-based colors and pigments have been used since ancient times, and miners have long used the name kobold ore for some minerals, cobalt was only discovered in 1735 by Georg Brandt....
 salts. The world leading manufacturer of cobalt blue in the 19th century was Blaafarveværket
Blaafarveværket

Blaafarvev?rket in Modum, Norway, founded by King Christian VII of Denmark of Denmark-Norway in the 1770s, became the largest industrial company of the country in the mid-19th century, employing more than 2,000 workers....
 in Norway
Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe that occupies the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula....
, led by Benjamin Wegner
Jacob Benjamin Wegner

Jacob Benjamin Wegner was a Prussian-Norway industrialist born in K?nigsberg. He was Director General and co-owner of the Blaafarvev?rket, the world leading producer of cobalt pigment, from 1823 to 1849....
. The pigment is extraordinarily stable.

Chemically it is a cobalt(II) oxide
Cobalt(II) oxide

Cobalt oxide appears as olive-green to red crystals, or greyish or black powder. It is used extensively in the ceramics industry as an additive to create blue colored glazes and enamels as well as in the chemical industry for producing cobalt salts....
-aluminium oxide
Aluminium oxide

Aluminium oxide is an amphoteric oxide of aluminium with the chemical formula 23. It is also commonly referred to as alumina or aloxite in the mining, ceramic and materials science communities....
, or cobalt(II) aluminate, CoAl2O4. The compound is made by sintering
Sintering

Sintering is a method for making objects from Powder , by heating the material below its melting point until its particles adhesion to each other....
 the stoichiometric mixture of finely ground CoO and Al2O3 at 1200°C.






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Cobalt blue is a cool, slightly desaturated blue color
Color

Color or colour is the visual perception property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue and others....
, historically made using cobalt
Cobalt

Cobalt is a hard, lustrous, grey metal, a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. Although cobalt-based colors and pigments have been used since ancient times, and miners have long used the name kobold ore for some minerals, cobalt was only discovered in 1735 by Georg Brandt....
 salts. The world leading manufacturer of cobalt blue in the 19th century was Blaafarveværket
Blaafarveværket

Blaafarvev?rket in Modum, Norway, founded by King Christian VII of Denmark of Denmark-Norway in the 1770s, became the largest industrial company of the country in the mid-19th century, employing more than 2,000 workers....
 in Norway
Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe that occupies the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula....
, led by Benjamin Wegner
Jacob Benjamin Wegner

Jacob Benjamin Wegner was a Prussian-Norway industrialist born in K?nigsberg. He was Director General and co-owner of the Blaafarvev?rket, the world leading producer of cobalt pigment, from 1823 to 1849....
. The pigment is extraordinarily stable.

Chemically it is a cobalt(II) oxide
Cobalt(II) oxide

Cobalt oxide appears as olive-green to red crystals, or greyish or black powder. It is used extensively in the ceramics industry as an additive to create blue colored glazes and enamels as well as in the chemical industry for producing cobalt salts....
-aluminium oxide
Aluminium oxide

Aluminium oxide is an amphoteric oxide of aluminium with the chemical formula 23. It is also commonly referred to as alumina or aloxite in the mining, ceramic and materials science communities....
, or cobalt(II) aluminate, CoAl2O4. The compound is made by sintering
Sintering

Sintering is a method for making objects from Powder , by heating the material below its melting point until its particles adhesion to each other....
 the stoichiometric mixture of finely ground CoO and Al2O3 at 1200°C. It was discovered by Louis Jacques Thénard
Louis Jacques Thénard

Louis Jacques Th?nard , was a France chemist.His father, a poor peasant, managed to have him educated at the academy of Sens, and sent him at the age of sixteen to study pharmacy in Paris....
 in 1802. Commercial production began in France in 1807. The first recorded use of cobalt blue as a color name in English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 was in 1777.

Cobalt blue in human culture

Art
Art

Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music and literature....
  • John Varley
    John Varley (painter)

    John Varley was an England Watercolor painting Painting and astrologer, and a close friend of William Blake. They collaborated in 1819–1820 on the book Visionary Heads, written by Varley and illustrated by Blake....
     suggested cobalt blue as a good substitution for ultramarine
    Ultramarine

    File:Pigment Violet 15.jpgUltramarine is a blue pigment consisting primarily of a double silicate of aluminium and sodium with some sulfides or sulfates, and occurring in nature as a proximate component of lapis lazuli....
     blue for painting skies.
  • Maxfield Parrish
    Maxfield Parrish

    Maxfield Parrish was an United States painting and illustration....
    , famous partly for the intensity of his skyscapes, used cobalt blue, and cobalt blue is sometimes called Parrish blue as a result.
Construction
Construction

In the fields of architecture and civil engineering, construction is a process that consists of the building or assembling of infrastructure. Far from being a single activity, large scale construction is a feat of multitasking....
  • Because of its chemical stability in the presence of alkali, cobalt blue is used as a pigment in blue concrete
    Concrete

    Concrete is a construction material composed of cement as well as other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, construction aggregate , water , and Chemistry admixtures....
    .
Glassmaking
  • The blue
    Blue

    Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440?490 Nanometre....
     seen on many glassware pieces is cobalt blue, and it is used widely by artists in many other fields.
Ophthalmology
Ophthalmology

Ophthalmology is the branch of medicine which deals with the Eye diseases and Eye surgery of the visual pathways, including the eye, brain, and areas surrounding the eye, such as the lacrimal system and eyelids....
  • "Cobalt Blue" is used as a filter used in ophthalmoscopes, and is used to illuminate the cornea of the eye following application of fluorescein dye
    Fluorescein

    Fluorescein is a fluorophore commonly used in microscopy, in a type of dye laser as the gain medium, in forensics and serology to detect latent blood stains, and in dye tracing....
     which is used to detect corneal ulcers and scratches.


Toxicity


Cobalt blue is toxic when inhaled or ingested. Potters who fail to take adequate precautions when using cobalt blue may succumb to cobalt poisoning
Cobalt poisoning

Cobalt poisoning is the intoxication caused by excessive levels of cobalt in the body. Cobalt naturally occurs in animals in minute amounts and forms part of the structure of Vitamin B12, which plays an important role in cell metabolism....
.

See also

  • List of colors
    List of colors

    The following is a complete list of colors with associated articles. See also color names and the list of color topics.Note that a large percentage of the color swatches below are taken from computer-domain-specific naming schemes such as X11 or HTML4 ....


External links