(Ultra) high performance liquid chromatography Full characterisation of organic colorants

In the field of cultural heritage, analysis of organic colorants is a challenging task. The term organic colorants is used in this paper to indicate those colorants mainly build-up from carbon. Since prehistoric time organic colorants were extracted from plant material and some animal species. One of the first application of these colorants were to dye textiles1 and it is known that even very complicated dyeing procedures such as woad dyeing using a fermentation vat were already performed in Europe in Bronze age.2 However, these same colorants can be also used for other materials and objects, as example to stain furniture, to be used as ink or, after conversion into an organic pigment, to paint. It is important to realise that in the application of furniture and especially
paintings, inorganic colorants, i.e. minerals can be used as well and are present in abundance. In addition to the natural organic colorants, synthetic colorants were introduced in the second half of the 19th century thereby extending the
possibilities to colour all different kind of objects. As a result, the range of organic colorants to be identified increased significantly