Bister

Natural organic pigment

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Composition and Properties of Bister

Bister or bistre is wood soot containing much tar and its color varies between warm black and brown-black. The pigment is destroyed by acids and alkalis and is not very lightfast due to the large content of organic material (tar).

bister-crystals

Pigment

Bister-painted-swatch

Painted swatch

Names 

Alternative names

Bistre, bituminous charcoal, brown lampblack, soot brown

Color Index

Natural Brown 11 (NBr 11)

Word origin

From French, of unknown origin.

Spain Flag

Bister

German

Spain Flag

Bistre

French

Spain Flag

Bistro

Italian

Spain Flag

Bistre

Spanish

Preparation 

Wood, preferably beechwood, is burned and the resulting soot is boiled in water and filtered.

History of Use 

Bister had been in use since the Middle Ages mainly in watercolor painting and drawing.

Examples of use

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Sex workers at rest

fragonard-sex-workers-at-rest 

Anthony van Dyck, ‘Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart’, ca 1638
Van-Dyck-Lord-John-Stuart-and-His-Brother-Lord-Bernard-Stuart

 

Lord John’s golden and brown costume: pure lead-tin yellow in the highlights and lead-tin yellow with yellow ochre, lead white and some red ochre in the mid-tones. The shadows are painted in reddish ochre with Vandyke brown and some yellow ochre and also bister or bistre (pitch-like product of heating (pyrolysis) of wood).

Van-Dyck-Lord-John-Stuart-and-His-Brother-Lord-Bernard-Stuart-pigments-2

Identification

References

XRF (x-ray fluorescence)FT-IR (Fourier-Transform IR)Raman and SERS (Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy) spectra can be found in ref. (1).

(1) María L. Roldan, Silvia A. Centeno, Adriana Rizzo, Yana van Dyke, Characterization of Bistre Pigment Samples by FTIR, SERS, Py-GC/MS and XRF, Mater. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc. Vol. 1656, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/opl.2014.823

(2) J. Winter, “The Characterization of Pigments Based on Carbon Studies in Conservation, 28:49-66, 1983.

Further Reading

References

Winter, J. and West FitzHugh, E., Pigments based on Carbon, in Berrie, B.H. Editor, Artists’ Pigments, A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics, Volume 4, pp. 1-37.

S. Muntwyler, J. Lipscher, HP. Schneider, Das Farbenbuch, 2nd. Ed., 2023, alataverlag Elsau, pp. 174-75.