Bitumen

Egyptian leopard in bitumen covered wood
MFA# 03.1137

Human effigy
MFA# 1993.775

Description

A common name for the organic, or hydrocarbon, portion of Asphalt. Bitumen is a dark brown or black solid to semisolid material. It was used by ancient Egyptians as an adhesive. Bitumen is currently is used in hot-melt adhesives, coating, paints, sealants, roofing and road coating. The name bitumen has been used as a synonym for Asphaltum, Tar, and Pitch and was also used as a commercial product name for a transparent, brown artists pigment made from asphaltum.

Synonyms and Related Terms

Bitumen (Deut.); bitume (Fr.); bitumen (Esp.); bitume (It.); betume (Port.); asphaltum; tar; pitch; asphaltum; tar; pitch;

FTIR (MFA)

Risks

• Combustible.
• Softens at slightly elevated temperatures.
• Ages poorly in dried oil films resulting in movement, disfigurement and/or cracks.

Physical and Chemical Properties

• Soluble in carbon disulfide.
• Refractive Index = 1.64 - 1.66

Resources and Citations

• R.White "Brown and Black Organic Glazes, Pigments and Paints" National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 10:58-71, 1986.

• Georgiana Languri, Molecular studies of Asphalt, Mummy and Kassel earth pigments, MOLART report 2004, available through Archetype Publications, London.

• John S. Mills, Raymond White, The Organic Chemistry of Museum Objects, Butterworth Heineman, London, 2nd ed., 1994

• R. J. Gettens, G.L. Stout, Painting Materials, A Short Encyclopaedia, Dover Publications, New York, 1966

• G.S.Brady, Materials Handbook, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1971 Comment: p. 76

• Ralph Mayer, A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1969 (also 1945 printing)

• Dictionary of Building Preservation, Ward Bucher, ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York City, 1996

• The Dictionary of Art, Grove's Dictionaries Inc., New York, 1996

• Richard S. Lewis, Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 10th ed., 1993

• Henry Hodges, Artifacts: An Introduction to Early Materials and Technology, Ronald P. Frye, Kingston, Canada, 1988

• Thomas C. Jester (ed.), Twentieth-Century Building Materials, McGraw-Hill Companies, Washington DC, 1995

• Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia, Douglas M. Considine (ed.), Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1976

• Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997

• The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998

• Art and Architecture Thesaurus Online, https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, 2000