Historical Artifacts

I know Pliny the Elder wrote a bit about it, so I checked and grabbed the relevant section from his Natural History:

All these plans, however, are new-fangled and troublesome; for this substance may be prepared, in numerous ways, from the soot that is yielded by the combustion of resin or pitch; so much so, indeed, that manufactories have been built on the principle of not allowing an escape for the smoke evolved by the process. The most esteemed black [paint], however, that is made in this way, is prepared from the wood of the torch-pine.

It is adulterated by mixing it with the ordinary soot from furnaces and baths, a substance which is also employed for the purpose of writing. Others, again, calcine dried wine-lees, and assure us that if the wine was originally of good quality from which the colour is made, it will bear comparison with that of indicum. Polygnotus and Micon, the most celebrated painters of Athens, made their black from grape-husks, and called it “tryginon.” Apelles invented a method of preparing it from burnt ivory, the name given to it being “elephantinon.”