The Mineral Gallery is loved by many, so what better way to paint the walls than with the minerals that make it so special?

As we continue putting our collections and their stories at the heart of our transformation, we’ve undergone an exciting project with London Pigment, extracting pigments from Cornish minerals that could be used to create paint for gallery walls.

Owner of London Pigment, Lucy Mayes uses unusual materials to make colour as a way of documenting events she encounters. Through this practice, she collects earth colours around Britain and through waste streams, using the earth’s natural resources to make pigment.

On her trip to the museum, Lucy began to experiment with minerals that had been donated to the museum for research purposes. From these Cornish minerals, donated to the museum for research purposes, Lucy created a selection of mineral pigments. From tones of blue and green, extracted from azurite and malachite, to red and brown shares, from separate out iron oxides.

After her visit to the museum, Lucy continued a tour of Cornwall, seeking other streams to extract new colours from. Her journey took her to Cornish Lithium, Cornwall. Here, she was able to extract colour from iron stained kaolin found as a wet slurry. In line with London Pigment’s work around waste streams, and the museum’s own commitment to sustainability, the slurry from which the pigments were extracted was a byproduct of prospecting for lithium rich granite.

The pigment created from local minerals will be used as the main colourant for two interior paint finishes, a matte emulsion for the walls and an eggshell paint for the woodwork. The pigment made will then be used by a paint making company to manufacture the paint. The resulting colour may be a pigment colour created from one source or a blend of different mineral samples to create the right colour for the space.

This paint will be a dynamic part of the Mineral Gallery’s upgrade, creating a unique and lasting connection between sites of extraction, Cornwall’s rich mining history and the visitor experience.