Golden and shining colors were used thousands of years ago to provide added value to objects such as buildings or statues. Until the end of the 19th century, gold leaf was applied for these purposes, but the gilding process was very time-consuming and the raw material extremely expensive. At the beginning of the last century, owing to new manufacturing techniques, gold leaf was gradually replaced with metal-effect pigments based on copper zinc alloys. These gold bronze pigments have found widespread use in the printing, coatings and plastics industries whenever brilliance and metallic golden luster are required.