Origins of Colour - Since the stone age, people have been communicating with each other by putting coloured paints or inks onto surfaces. Today, cave walls have been replaced by many other surfaces, including paper of course - and today's high quality inks are a far cry from the basic paint colours which our ancestors used. But where do these inks come from? Every commonly-used colour today contains a basic pigment which is originally found in nature. Purple from seashells, blue from minerals and yellow from flowers - the origins of the colours which help us to communicate are often stranger than you might think.

Saffron comes from the stigma of the Saffron Crocus, a plant with mauve flowers that is native to warm regions of Eurasia. An enormous number of flowers are required to harvest even a small quantity of the large dried stigmas from which this orange-yellow dye is produced.

Umber is a natural brown clay pigment which has been used since prehistoric times and which contains iron and manganese oxides. The name comes from Umbria, a mountainous region of central Italy, but the clay is found in many parts of the world.

Carmine is a scarlet dye, used primarily as a food colouring. It is derived from the dried crushed bodies of the female cochineal beetle, which is native to Mexico and lives and feeds on the prickly pear cactus.

Ultramarine is a bright blue pigment which is used to make tempera and oil paints, much favoured by Renoir. It was originally made by grinding and processing Lapis Lazuli, a deep blue metamorphic rock whose primary constituent is the mineral Lazurite.

Tyrian Purple was historically used to colour royal garments. It is made from the shell of a predatory tropical marine mollusk called Murex, which bears omate spines and has a brightly coloured inner surface. It is this inner surface which is ground to a fine dust to make this dye.