Bice, from the French bis, a word of doubtful origin, originally meaning dark-coloured, was a term applied in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 to particular green

Green

Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...

 or blue

Blue

Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal...

 pigment

Pigment

A pigment is a material that changes the color of reflected or transmitted light as the result of wavelength-selective absorption. This physical process differs from fluorescence, phosphorescence, and other forms of luminescence, in which a material emits light.Many materials selectively absorb...

s. In French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 the terms vert bis and azur bis mean dark green and dark blue respectively. Bice pigments were generally prepared from basic copper

Copper

Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...

 carbonate

Carbonate

In chemistry, a carbonate is a salt of carbonic acid, characterized by the presence of the carbonate ion, . The name may also mean an ester of carbonic acid, an organic compound containing the carbonate group C2....

s, but sometimes ultramarine

Ultramarine

Ultramarine is a blue pigment consisting primarily of a double silicate of aluminium and sodium with some sulfides or sulfates, and occurring in nature as a proximate component of lapis lazuli...

 or other pigments were used.

Historic usage

Jo Kirby of the National Gallery London notes the occurrence of the pigment bice in three grades in an account of Tudor painting at Greenwich Palace in 1527. In this case, the three grades indicate the use of the mineral azurite

Azurite

Azurite is a soft, deep blue copper mineral produced by weathering of copper ore deposits. It is also known as Chessylite after the type locality at Chessy-les-Mines near Lyon, France...

 rather than a manufactured blue copper carbonate. Similarly, green bice in other 16th-records may sometimes have been the mineral malachite

Malachite

Malachite is a copper carbonate mineral, with the formula Cu2CO32. This green-colored mineral crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system, and most often forms botryoidal, fibrous, or stalagmitic masses. Individual crystals are rare but do occur as slender to acicular prisms...

. Ian Bristow, an historian of paint

Historic paint analysis

Historic paint analysis is the scientific analysis of architectural finishes, including not only paints but also metallic finishes and clear and translucent finishes used on historic buildings. The primary purpose of such analysis is to determine the color of the finish used at a particular time in...

, concluded that the pigment Blue Bice found in records of British interior-decoration until the first half of the 17th-century was azurite. The expensive natural mineral azurite was superseded by manufactured Blue Verditer.