If you had been in Alston, Cumberland, on December 25, 1796, at the home of Thomas and Margaret Pattinson, you would have been witness to a very special occasion. It was Christmas Day. Obviously, as significant as that day would be for many of Alston’s residents, the Pattinson’s had a more impending birth celebration on their minds. Margaret gave birth to a son they named Hugh Lee Pattinson on that Christmas Day. Like many successful people, Hugh would later bring some level of notoriety to the region of Cumberland.

Hugh studied science and formed an interest in chemistry as it related to metallurgy. This was a smart move given that mining would yield metals that required not only physical extraction from the ground, but a variety of processes that separated and purified them. Hugh was not a one-sided adolescent. He organized a debate society and was the driving force in its success. After reading extensively about electricity, he created experiments that surprised and delighted both his friends and adoring mother. Breaking with traditional hobbies and idle pastimes of young people today, Hugh was the proud operator of a furnace located on the third floor of his mother’s house. His sporadic explosions and fires hot enough to melt metals, by today’s standards, would certainly raise the eyebrows of any family’s household insurance agent.

How manufacturers get the lead to turn into a wonderful white pigment becomes something of a mystery. The chemistry of the process gets a bit complicated. Lead rarely presents itself on this planet in a pure form as gold sometimes does. Lead needs to be separated from surrounding rock and purified mechanically. It can be found in relatively rich ore deposits in the minerals called galena, cerussite and anglesite, but it’s also combined with more commonly known metals like copper, zinc and silver. Refinement separates metals from each other and subsequent processing drives off additional impurities or isolates other usable metals to render pure samples.

Hugh Pattinson’s claim to fame comes from the patent he filed for creating a process of separating silver from lead. As stated earlier, lead is usually mixed with a variety of metals. Hugh’s patent described a method of separating silver from lead but historic editorial comments note that the cost of doing the separation was not economical given the amount of energy and time that was needed to extract a small amount of silver.

The traditional process of making lead white pigment is well documented. Sheets or buckles of lead were transformed to lead acetate through exposure to vapors of acetic acid. Heat and carbon dioxide turn the lead acetate into lead carbonate. That chemical process, by a variety of methods, created the lead white pigment artists have used for centuries. It was time consuming and tricky to get the lead to consistently transform into the carbonate form of the metal. Experimenters looked for faster, cheaper ways to make a substantial white colorant that would have the same superior characteristics as lead white. Hugh Pattinson used his knowledge of metallurgy to come up with a traditional lead white substitute.

The documentation of Pattinson’s lead white pigment is somewhat fragmented. The lifespan and popularity of his pigment discovery remains obscure. Pattinson took a different chemical route to create a lead white pigment. He precipitated a solution of chloride and oxide of lead in a hydrated state to create lead oxychloride. It yielded a white pigment with fairly good covering power. Lead oxychloride is a chemical relative of another pigment called Turner’s yellow. As is evident, lead oxychloride is not the same as lead carbonate, the chemical name for lead white pigment.

Turning again to the history of this material, it’s curious that the pigment referred to as Pattinson’s white does not have a date of origin. Guessing that it was invented around the time that Pattinson was in his prime when he was working out the process for separating silver from lead, the approximate date of the invention of Pattinson’s white could have been around 1830. A.H. Church refers to Pattinson’s white in the 1890 edition of The Chemistry of Paints and Painting. But by 1913, Hurst’s A Manual of Painters’ Colours, Oils, and Varnishes refers to lead oxychloride as “now obsolete.”  

I’m speculating that Pattinson’s white must have had a fair degree of success since it was marketed for approximately 70 years. However, it must have had some inherent problems since lead carbonate white remained high in production and sales throughout the first half of the 20th century. Lead white sales and production start to diminish only after the acceptance of titanium dioxide as a pigment with superior performance characteristics.

It might be urban folklore to think that once it was discovered that lead white was toxic and harmful to people, a race to find a substitute was initiated. The literature on lead white periodically reminds us that the dangers of lead white were well known. The lack of a suitable replacement with the same performance characteristics and well as a powerful lead production lobby, delayed the changeover from lead-based white paints to titanium and titanium-zinc combinations.

This story doesn’t end with the apotheosis of Hugh Pattinson. They didn’t name Alston’s town square after him, though he did reach a level of celebrity that allowed him the honor of laying the cornerstone of Alston’s city hall in 1857, just one year before he died. His Pattinson’s white paint didn’t have a sustained market, although approximately 70 years of sales isn’t a bad run. His success was the product of a time period when inventing a fledgling industrial process yielded financial growth and security.