12/09/2026
๐๐๐ ๐ฌ๐ข๐จ ๐๐ก๐ข๐ช?
There was once an artists' pigment called Mummy Brown.
And, rather disturbingly, the name was quite literal.
Mummy Brown was made by grinding the remains of ancient Egyptian human and even feline mummies and mixing them with white pitch and myrrh. Used by European artists for centuries, it became particularly popular during the 18th and 19th centuries.
One artist who apparently had no idea what was actually in his paint was the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones.
According to his wife Georgiana, when Burne-Jones was told that Mummy Brown really did contain mummy, he refused to believe it. Once convinced, he went straight to his studio, returned with his tube of the paint and insisted that it be given a proper burial.
So the family dug a hole in the garden, buried the tube and marked the spot by planting a daisy above it.
It's a wonderfully eccentric story, but also a reminder of just how extraordinary the history of artists' materials can be. Pigments have been made from minerals, plants, insects, metals and, in this case, something we would find completely unthinkable today.
Art history can be very strange indeed.
Little Black Gallery
394B Kerikeri Road, Kerikeri
Open Tuesday to Friday
11:00amโ3:00pm
09 407 1311
[email protected]
Image: Edward Burne-Jones, The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon, 1881โ1898. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. The painting is thought to have used Mummy Brown, although this has not been definitively proven.
