Cobalt blue is a cool, slightly desaturated blue color, historically made using cobalt salts of alumina. It is used in certain ceramics (historically, especially Chinese porcelain) and painting; the different cobalt pigment smalt, based on silica, is more often used directly in tinted transparent glasses. The pigment is extraordinarily stable.
Chemically, cobalt blue is a cobalt(II) oxide-aluminium oxide, or cobalt(II) aluminate, CoAl2O4. The com...
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Cobalt blue is a cool, slightly desaturated blue color, historically made using cobalt salts of alumina. It is used in certain ceramics (historically, especially Chinese porcelain) and painting; the different cobalt pigment smalt, based on silica, is more often used directly in tinted transparent glasses. The pigment is extraordinarily stable.
Chemically, cobalt blue is a cobalt(II) oxide-aluminium oxide, or cobalt(II) aluminate, CoAl2O4. The compound is made by sintering the stoichiometric mixture of finely ground CoO and Al2O3 (alumina) at 1200°C.
Cobalt blue in impure form had long been used in Chinese porcelain, but was independently discovered as a pure alumina-based pigment by Louis Jacques Thénard, in 1802. Commercial production began in France in 1807. The first recorded use of cobalt blue as a color name in English was in 1777. The leading world manufacturer of cobalt blue in the 19th century was Blaafarveværket ("blue-color works," in Dano-Norwegian) in Norway, led by...
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