The Story of Colours

What this quiz asks

• The famous Tyrian purple of the ancient world was extracted from which creatures?
• Egg tempera paint is usually made by mixing powdered pigment with which part of this?
• Which colour of wedding dress did Queen Victoria make fashionable when she married in 1840?
• The colour orange was named after the fruit, not the other way round.
• The precious blue pigment ultramarine was originally ground from which stone?
• What was the main ingredient of the brown paint called 'mummy brown'?
• Select ALL of these colourings that come from animals.
• In Qing-dynasty China, which colour was reserved for the emperor?
• When William Perkin accidentally made the first synthetic dye, mauveine, what was he trying to produce?
• Is Egyptian blue, used by painters in ancient Egypt, a man-made pigment?
• The colour name 'turquoise' comes from an old French word meaning what?
• For centuries, the white paint used most by European artists was based on which toxic metal?
• The woad plant of Europe and the tropical indigo plant yield the same blue dye molecule.
• The colour magenta takes its name from an 1859 battle fought at a town near which city?
• Select ALL of these that are natural earth pigments, made from coloured clays.
• The phrase 'born in the purple' first described the children of which rulers?
• Scheele's Green, a vivid 18th-century pigment used in wallpapers and fabrics, contained which poison?
• In what year did William Perkin discover mauveine, the first synthetic dye?
• Order these colourants by when they were first made or used, oldest first.
• The word 'khaki', first used for British army uniforms in India, comes from a word meaning what?