Wallace Seymour Blue Verditer, blue bice. Copper carbonate. Nottingham Bespoke Oil Paint

Blue Verditer, blue bice. Copper carbonate. Nottingham

Made in small batches to our recipe. CuO + nH2O. An artificial copper-calcium carbonate pigment, a synthetic version of azurite. In manufacture, copper nitrate is mixed with chalk, or precipitated from copper sulphate in solution, in combination with ammonia and lime paste. During preparation, if the temperature becomes too warm, a green shade develops (green verditer). In England, verditer pigments were formerly manufactured in Sheffield, Yorkshire. Blue verditer was important in wall decoration during the 1600s and 1700s and also used on a small scale in easel painting. Current production is made to our recipe in Nottingham, England.

Transparent. Slightly grainy when thinned with solvent. Fast drying.

If extra oil is added to the paint paste, the colour tends to turn green-blue: the copper reacts with acidity in the oil and turns green (copper oleate).