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  • (cheery music)

  • It can be beetles that come off a cactus,

  • it can be the dried urine of a cow,

  • little insects that grow on an oak tree,

  • a chunk of lead that's soaked in vinegar.

  • It's truly amazing.

  • (cheerful music)

  • We're in Harvard University,

  • outside the Forbes pigment collection.

  • Pigment is a very small particle of colored material

  • that is mixed in with a binding medium.

  • The pigment gives paint its color.

  • (Bright music)

  • The Forbes pigment collection has been brought together over several decades.

  • We have around 2,500 pigments.

  • We have a lot of very unusual and very rare colors.

  • So this is, I think, one of the more unusually named pigments.

  • It's called dragon's blood.

  • It doesn't come from dragons, it comes from rattan palms.

  • And it give a very bright red pigment.

  • The unusual aspect of mummy has to do

  • with its source rather than the color itself,

  • and that comes from Egyptian mummies.

  • And it's the resin that's applied to the outside of the bandages.

  • I think the rarest color that we have

  • is actually an entire ball of Indian yellow.

  • And this is a pigment that is made from the dried urine of cows

  • that are fed only on mango leaves.

  • If you're looking at a work of art,

  • and you want to understand what is original

  • and what's a restoration, you will take

  • a tiny sample of pigment and analyze it.

  • A lot of the pigments are actually toxic,

  • so you don't want to handle the pigments

  • and then go out to lunch.

  • There's a green called emerald green

  • that has an arsenic center to it.

  • We can use them for telling if something is real or not.

  • People will say this is by a certain artist,

  • and we can look at the materials that are used

  • and decide if those materials were available

  • during that artist's lifetime.

  • If not, then we have to look at

  • who might have painted that picture.

  • I can't pick a personal favorite.

  • There's, it's like asking to pick a favorite child.

  • No, the other 2,400 would feel left out.

  • (laughing)

  • (relaxing music)

(cheery music)

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