The Story of Color Blue

Whether it’s glacier pale or Mediterranean bright, blue is a color with long-standing mystical associations. Perhaps this is because blue is the color of the sky, something we can always see but never reach, or perhaps it’s because, as chemist Heinz Berke points out, early humans “had no access to blue because blue is not what you call an earth color … You don’t find it in the soil.” Blue was elusive, and this made it valuable. The earliest stable blue was made from lapis lazuli, the mining of which began in Afghanistan around six thousand years ago. Egyptians loved this bold cobalt blue and would pulverize lapis lazuli stones and mix the resulting powder with animal fat or vegetable gum to create a thick blue paste, which they used to adorn the dead bodies of royalty. 

From “Marian Blue” by Michael Kruse for The Paris Review  

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