Wonderful Ancient Dyes.
Chemistry, one might Imagine, is the science which has, perhaps, made the greatest strides during the last five or six decades. Yet modern chemists cannot compound such dyes as were commonly used when the great nations of to-day were still unborn. Now and again it happens that searchers after antiquities come across fragments of fabrics which were dyed thousands of years ago, and they are astonished by the wonderful richness of the colors of the cloths, which, despite their age, are brighter and purer than anything we can produce.
Modern artists buy their colors ready made, and spend large sums of money on pigments with which to color their canvases. The pictures of modern artists will be colorless when many of the works of ancient masters are as bright as they are to-day. Just as the secret of dyeing has been lost, so has the secret of preserving the colors of artists’ paints. Yet the secret was known to every ancient artist, for they all mixed their own colors.