Zaffre (also spelt Zaffer in American English, see spelling differences), a prescientific, or alchemical substance, is a deep blue pigment obtained by roasting cobalt ore, and is made of either an impure form of cobalt oxide or impure cobalt arsenate. During the Victorian Era, zaffre was used to prepare smalt and to stain glass blue.Mackenzie's Five Thousand Receipts in All the Useful and Domestic Arts , 1845, "Pottery: Black glazing p 369.
The first recorded use of zaffer as a color name in English was sometime in the 1550s (exact year uncertain).Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill Page 207; Color Sample of Zaffer: Page 109 Plate 43 Color Sample D11
See also List of colors
References