The student who isolated the pink pigment molecules found them accidentally, and though it won’t be useful as a commercial color, it can teach us what the ancient world might have looked like.

But the source of the black colouring, found in works ranging from ancient Roman ... store and exhibit works of art. Janssens agrees that knowing the exact cause of vermilion’s blackening ...

He was raised among the traditional carpet makers of Xinjiang, and learned their ancient craft of sheep’s wool felting, which he has employed in some of the work in Borderlands at Vermilion Art ...