Amorphous carbon particles obtained from the soot of burned fats, oils or resins. Lampblack is soft bluish-black pigment that is very stable and unaffected by light, acids and alkalis. The powder is extremely fine. It is a useful pigment if a very dense, opaque black is required. It was often mixed with lead white to produce a grey pigment. Lampblack may contain a small percentage of residual fats, oils or resins. This makes it mix poorly with water and also makes linseed oil dry slowly into a soft film. Umber was often added to the mixture as a drier. For use as a watercolour, lampblack was mixed with glue, prepared in sticks and sold as India ink. Currently lampblack is used as a black pigment in cements. It is listed among the pigments and dyes used for colouring stucco marble in the seventeenth an eighteenth century. See also bone black, charcoal black, and vine black. Synonyms: carbon black; CI 77266; Pigment Black 6; smoke black; soot black; oil black; flame black; blacking; lampblack. Wittenburg (1999); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2000); Trench (2000). [J. Cassar, R. de Angelis]