Artists invented the first pigments-a combination of soil, animal fat, burnt charcoal and chalk-as early as 40,000 years ago, creating a basic palette of five colours: red, yellow, brown, black and white. From that time to now millions of colours developed. Each colour has unique story, let’s sparkle it.The honeycomb design on breakfast cereal, the fleur-de-lis spikes on an iron gate, a constellation of guilloche spirals on our banknotes-if we look close enough, most of our built environment is embossed or embellished with some kind of pattern. But behind those everyday patterns are surprising, sometimes scandalous stories.