Historic Quarry by-products, Mine Ochres and Historic Minerals by-products

The raw material may be from a historic quarry source, or be a by-product (i.e. not the maim activity of the quarry). For example, we have some ochres from Britain, which are involve reclaimed raw material from the coal mining industry. The raw material has been cleaned, free of contaminates and thereby recycled. Some raw material is effectively ‘waste’ in quarrying terms and would go for landfill – and often as ‘fill’ for road/rail embankments and other landscaping purposes. Our intervention involves identification of useful colours and careful extraction, washing, sieving, drying of the material. Bright Orange Ochre and Bright Orange-Yellow Ochre are derivatives of Travertine Marble – the coloured material is washed out of the white marble and then processed into pigment.