The Mayan Colors Bundle from DANIEL SMITH celebrates the remarkable rediscovery of Mayan Blue, a unique and mysterious pigment from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

First created in modern-day Mexico in about 800 AD, Mayan Blue is an organic-inorganic hybrid pigment derived from indigo and earth. It was used in the Mayan civilization for eight centuries before disappearing in the 1600s.

Transparent, luminous, and unusually lightfast for its era, Mayan Blue was a mystery to art historians and chemists for hundreds of years. It wasn't until the 1950s that scientists identified the unique crystalline structure of Mayan Blue and successfully duplicated the millennium-old work of the original inventors.

More recently, there's been perhaps an even more exciting development: the same chemical principles that allowed Mayan Blue to be synthesized and mass-produced have been used to create a range of new pigments that share some of the properties of the original Mayan Blue.

The industry name for these pigments is MayaCrom, and Daniel Smith has made them all into gorgeous artist paints for your creative pleasure. Our Mayan Colors Bundle includes six full-sized tubes: Mayan Blue Genuine, plus five newly developed MayaCrom colors: Mayan Violet, Mayan Red, Mayan Orange, Mayan Yellow, and Mayan Dark Blue.

Six 15 mL tubes. Made in the United States.

About Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolor:

Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolor is not just the premier brand of American watercolor—it is the widest, most experimental range of watercolors in the world, with 266 colors and a never-ending flow of new ideas. Still based in Seattle after 50 years, Daniel Smith also remains at the forefront of art materials innovation. The Pacific Northwest's premier color house popularized quinacridones for artist use, created the first commercial versions of key colors on the contemporary palette, and pioneered new mineral colors by creating the pigments from scratch, literally grinding down the stones and binding them in an easy-to-use traditional watercolor.

Compared with the other brands of professional watercolor on the market, Daniel Smith stands out for its dense pigmentation, matte finish, and strongly adhesive binder. Taken together, these three qualities make Extra Fine Watercolors the unparalleled leader in sheer amount of pigment attached to the page. Even without layering, and even on wet paper, it's easy to build up a completely saturated masstone of most colors.

Each Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolor is individually rated for lightfastness, granulation, staining, and opacity. Most colors carry the highest lightfastness rating, meaning colors won't fade for hundreds of years. We've highlighted the key facts about this specific color in the About This Color section above, and pigment information is available in the detailed product data below.

15 mL tube. Made in the United States.