Titanium white

Titanium was discovered as a natural element in 1791 by the Reverend William Gregor (1761–1817), a clergyman by profession and a scientist by aptitude. He analysed a black sand (menachite or ilmenite) that he had found in his parish in Menaccan, Cornwall, and named it Menaccanite before publishing his findings¹.

Around the same time (1793/1794), the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743–1817) isolated the compound of a new substance from a sample of rutile or schörl, a type of tourmaline, originating from Hungary. He recognised that it was identical to the substance discovered by Gregor². Klaproth named the substance Titanium:

“Whenever no name can be found for a new fossil which indicates its peculiar and characteristic properties (in which situation I find myself at present), I think it best to choose such a denomination as means nothing of itself, and thus can give no rise to any erroneous ideas. In consequence of this, as I did in the case of the Uranium, I shall borrow the name for this metallic substance from mythology, and in particular from the Titans, the first sons of the earth. I therefore call this new metallic genus TITANIUM”³.

In Greek mythology, the Titans are the children of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky), powerful deities who predated the Olympians and were, in fact, the fathers and mothers of the Olympian gods.

However, titanium was not recognised as useful in artists’ materials until around 1870, when, according to W. F. Washburn⁴, Dr. John Overton of Louisville, U.S.A., apparently made the first use of titanium compounds as pigments.

From then onwards, numerous improvements were developed in order to achieve a higher-quality pigment. The challenge was to isolate titanium dioxide from the natural ores in which it occurs. The first regular large-scale production of titanium dioxide pigment was established in Norway in 1918⁵. At the same time, across the Atlantic, several trials, accompanied by related patents, were undertaken in the U.S.A., owing to the vast quantities of titanium-rich ores available there. However, the methods used to isolate titanium dioxide initially produced an inferior-quality material, limiting its use as a white pigment in the U.S.A. until well into the 1920s, when it was primarily used for exterior paints⁶.

An agreement between the respective Norwegian and American companies in 1920 enabled them to collaborate under a common umbrella and exchange their accumulated know-how. The wider introduction of titanium white to artists’ palettes in Europe took place around 1922⁷.

Further improvements subsequently enabled artists throughout the 20th century and beyond to benefit from the existence and increasing sophistication of the grades of titanium white available today.