Chemist and director of the Swedish Mint, Georg Brandt, realized that enamel was not a compound of arsenic and known metals, as was believed at the time, but rather a compound of a new metal, cobalt. The name derives from Kobold, an underground demon from the mythology of the Ore Mountains between Saxony and Bohemia. It was also a tribute to the miners. The brilliant blue color was immediately used in European ceramics (blue was notoriously the most difficult to obtain), then in Chinese ceramics.
