The History of Milk Paint
The long history of milk paint had its beginning thousands of years ago, as humans first began exploring ways to apply color to drawings and crafted objects. Ancient artwork found on cave walls and unearthed artifacts reveal the application of a form of milk paint on some the oldest colored surfaces ever documented. Often the degree of vibrancy of the milk paint color on these discovered pieces is remarkable for such antiquities. Along with its decorative benefits, early users also found milk paint to have protective properties that would add durability to painted surfaces. Since that time, milk paint has had a significant place in the history, having been used for centuries not only for artwork, but to paint furniture, homes, barns and other structures.
Throughout the centuries following the creation of the original milk paint formula of milk, lime and pigments, improvements to milk paint were tested. Various added elements such as oils, waxes, and eggs were experimented with, resulting in differing degrees of success. In colonial America, the original milk paint formula was extremely prevalent, due to its practicality. Since nearly every household had livestock of some sort, milk was readily available. Lime was also typically in supply in most communities, so only the pigments were needed. Painters by trade would usually travel with an assortment of pigment colors. In the 1870's the first iteration of commercial paint became available with the development of the first sealable metal cans. Oil based formulas became widely used, and various new additives were developed. Harmful ingredients such as lead and mercury were used with insidious health consequences, until they were eventually revealed to be toxic. In the 1970's, serious effort began to remove these dangerous additives, as well as volatile organic compounds, or VOC's, from commercial paint. In the meantime, good old fashioned milk paint emerged as a rising, though not so new, star in the green revolution.
Today's consumers go out of their way to find products that are environmentally friendly and biodegradable. To folks in the earliest days of history, all that were available were all natural ingredients, such as the milk protein, lime, and earthen pigments that comprised the original milk paint formula. For most of its history, milk paint has been used, not because it is a green paint, but because it is an effective paint, made from a simple formula. Over time, the formula of milk paint has been improved with a broader range of colors, achieved by the use of enhanced pigment powders, and binding agents, but today's superior evolution of Real Milk Paint is still all natural and completely biodegradable.