10g piece of smalt in a bag.
Smalt is the oldest known man-made cobalt blue pigment. The term “smalt” comes from the Italian word “smaltare”, which means "to melt“. Smalt is a potash silicate strongly colored with cobalt oxide, which is melted, quenched, and ground to a powder.
The origin of smalt is obscure, but recent studies have shown that cobalt was already present in ancient Egyptian blue glass. However, there is no evidence that powdered cobalt glass was ever used as a painter’s pigment in ancient times. It is unknown when cobalt was first used in Europe. We do know that around the middle of the 15th century, cobalt minerals were discovered near the border of Bohemia and Saxony. In German Renaissance and Baroque painting, the pigment smalt played an important role, particularly for the depiction of air in frescos.
Due to the vast industrial production of new, more stable blue pigments, the knowledge surrounding smalt was almost lost at the beginning of the 20th century.
Smalt was the first historical pigment (re)created by Georg Kremer in 1977. The rediscovery of this ancient cobalt blue initiated the founding of Kremer Pigmente the same year. Today, Kremer Pigmente is the world’s only manufacturer of smalt, which is produced according to a recipe from 1820.
