Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. One of our upcoming episodes this week is
Speaker 1: on Sir William Henry Perkin, who accidentally discovered a synthetic
Speaker 1: die in eighteen fifty six. That die, known as Malvin,
Speaker 1: produced a rich purple color and became enormously popular. We
Speaker 1: mentioned Perkin very briefly in our August episode, A Brief
Speaker 1: History of Colors, So that's our Saturday classic for to
Speaker 1: day since it's sets the stage for that upcoming episode
Speaker 1: with an overview of ways that people around the world
Speaker 1: have been creating dies and paints since before the development
Speaker 1: of synthetic pigments. And we also went into more detail
Speaker 1: about one specific color, which was the color blue and
Speaker 1: a show that we recorded live at the National Gallery
Speaker 1: of Art in Washington, d C. That one came out
Speaker 1: as an episode on October six, nineteen. So if you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: I want some more colors for my Saturday, that's where
Speaker 1: you can find that one. A World of Color Away
Speaker 1: to enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class
Speaker 1: A production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Tracy Wilson and I'm Holly Crying. And
Speaker 1: we have gotten so many, so so many listener requests
Speaker 1: to talk about the history of a specific color. UM.
Speaker 1: Most recently it was Nicole who asked us to talk
Speaker 1: about the creation of the color move and before that,
Speaker 1: we had Door who asked us to talk about tell It,
Speaker 1: which is a blue dye that's really important in the
Speaker 1: Jewish tradition. He wrote an entire book on that one,
Speaker 1: and he sent us a review copy of it about
Speaker 1: a year ago. I'm absolutely certain we've gotten requests to
Speaker 1: talk about cockeneal red and a general history of the
Speaker 1: color blue. And I think those must have been on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter, because I can't find them in our inbox.
Speaker 1: So we also very recently had a listener named Halah
Speaker 1: asked if you might talk about a general history of
Speaker 1: color or of dies, and so that's where we are today.
Speaker 1: A lot of these other specific requests that people have
Speaker 1: made of us are going to come up today. UM,
Speaker 1: but this is sort of an overview of dies and
Speaker 1: pigments and how we've been using them during or throughout history,
Speaker 1: which I love because I love color, and you know,
Speaker 1: related to t Stile and art and all the other
Speaker 1: people on earth. The nice, nice follow up to our
Speaker 1: recent makeup episode, which featured lots of color talk, so
Speaker 1: it all makes sense. So uh, animal, vegetable or mineral
Speaker 1: could almost be a guessing game about pigments and dies.
Speaker 1: People have been using all of these to try to
Speaker 1: make things prettier all the way back into prehistory. Are
Speaker 1: they most of the world people have had a lot
Speaker 1: of them to choose from. If there wasn't a plant
Speaker 1: source of red, there could be an animal. And if
Speaker 1: there were neither of those, perhaps they had a mineral
Speaker 1: that they could source for red color. So to start, ochre,
Speaker 1: which is made of iron oxide, is found abundantly all
Speaker 1: over the planet. Iron oxide itself is one of their
Speaker 1: most common minerals, and ochre is probably the thing that
Speaker 1: people used to make their clothing and surroundings more colorful
Speaker 1: before they used anything else. That was probably the first pigment,
Speaker 1: and ochre produces a range of earthy kind of yellow
Speaker 1: brown to red brown colors. It was used in some
Speaker 1: of the world's oldest cave paintings, so when you imagine those,
Speaker 1: you can pretty quickly conjure what ochre looks like and
Speaker 1: what the various levels of saturation of it looked like.
Speaker 1: And it was also used in textiles. We have evidence
Speaker 1: that prehistoric people's also used it to dye animal skins.
Speaker 1: And while it's been used all over the world throughout history,
Speaker 1: in particular, the Maori of New Zealand have traditionally used
Speaker 1: ochre extensively. They've used it on their faces and hair,
Speaker 1: on their canoes and homes, and on the bones of
Speaker 1: the dead. There's also in the yellow family saffron, which
Speaker 1: comes from the dried stigmas of crocuses um. This makes
Speaker 1: really rich yellows and oranges, and one of its most
Speaker 1: recognizable uses as a dye is in the garments of
Speaker 1: Buddhist monks. Saffron has a really long history of its own.
Speaker 1: It could almost go in the later part of this
Speaker 1: episode when we're gonna be talking about a few colors
Speaker 1: that have a longer history. But just as much of
Speaker 1: its history is about being a spice and a medicine
Speaker 1: as it is about being a die. I'm just having
Speaker 1: a moment where I'm remembering my mom's awesome saffron bread
Speaker 1: as we talked about them. Saffron Saffron rice is also diligous,
Speaker 1: so good uh Mata root can make all kinds of
Speaker 1: shades of reds and yellows. Cinnabar, which is a sulfide mineral,
Speaker 1: has been used to make red as well, although it
Speaker 1: is unfortunately toxic. So is lead, which we also talked
Speaker 1: about in our cosmetics episode, which has also sometimes been
Speaker 1: used to make red paints. In Europe, people used wode
Speaker 1: to make blue and purple dyes for centuries. This is
Speaker 1: a plant that changed in the seventeenth century and people
Speaker 1: started importing indigo, which was a superior source of dye
Speaker 1: from India. India is not the only place where indigo grows,
Speaker 1: but once it started to catch on in in Europe,
Speaker 1: the British started up a number of indigo plantations in India.
Speaker 1: This made India the main source of indigo for much
Speaker 1: of Europe, and this sort of led to a cycle
Speaker 1: of demand and more demand. Um they would plant plantations
Speaker 1: and demand would increase and there would be more plantations,
Speaker 1: and people were really working themselves to the bone on
Speaker 1: these indigo plantations. This eventually led to India's Indigo Revolt,
Speaker 1: which was an uprising by the farmers against the plantations
Speaker 1: and the European owners of the plantations. In eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: six and eighteen fifty seven, Indigo is still used extensively today,
Speaker 1: though especially for dyeing Denham for your blue jeans. So
Speaker 1: green tone have come from lichen, fungi and especially minerals.
Speaker 1: Copper has been a big one here, but cobalt has
Speaker 1: also been used to make some shades of green. When
Speaker 1: it comes to shades of black, there are all kinds
Speaker 1: of very common things that you can use to make
Speaker 1: paints and inks out of, including soot, ivory and bones,
Speaker 1: but you can't really die things with most of these
Speaker 1: because they don't stick to the fabric. For a long time,
Speaker 1: there was no true black dye. People in Europe would
Speaker 1: mostly make black fabric by dyeing at a series of
Speaker 1: other colors, which unless it was sort of a byproduct
Speaker 1: of re dyeing the same gown over and over as
Speaker 1: it got older, this was just time consuming and expensive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's even an issue that continues today when people purchase
Speaker 1: an article of clothing or a piece of fabric and
Speaker 1: they want to diet black. Even the commercially available dyes,
Speaker 1: what you usually get is a very dark purple. It's
Speaker 1: very ticky to get a nice saturated black, and that
Speaker 1: actually changed this sort of time consuming, really costly approach
Speaker 1: to multiple dye layers that they were doing after Europeans
Speaker 1: started making their way to the America's and they actually
Speaker 1: found a tree that became known as logwood, and the
Speaker 1: heartwood of logwood is very very dark and a true
Speaker 1: black dye could be extracted from it. Because the primary
Speaker 1: source of logwood was traitors from Spain, this die was
Speaker 1: actually banned in England from its introduction there around fifteen
Speaker 1: seventy five all the way to sixteen seventy three. Parliament
Speaker 1: claimed that logwood produced colors quote of a fugacious character.
Speaker 1: The Anglo Spanish War and other tensions between England and
Speaker 1: Spain probably had a lot more to do with it
Speaker 1: than whether the die faded quickly. There are also lots
Speaker 1: and lots of ways to make white pigments, including chalk,
Speaker 1: rice and limestone, and as we also talked about in
Speaker 1: our Makeup episode, lead lead as kind of a multi
Speaker 1: purpose component, depending on exactly what it's made with and
Speaker 1: how it's prepared. That's really why there's so much lead
Speaker 1: based paint around for so many years, so in most
Speaker 1: of the world, people have had quite a number of
Speaker 1: options for making a vast array of colors, but a
Speaker 1: couple of specific diyes have turned out to have really,
Speaker 1: really rich stories of their own, and we will talk
Speaker 1: about those more in just a moment. If Tracy would
Speaker 1: like to take a brief pause for a word from
Speaker 1: our sponsor, I would. One source of red around the
Speaker 1: world has been insects. The cocaneal is a scale insect
Speaker 1: that's native to Central and South America. Some people also
Speaker 1: pronounce it cocon eal, and Europeans got their first glimpse
Speaker 1: of it thanks to the conquistor Hernan Cortes in the
Speaker 1: fifteen hundreds. The various species of insect used for this
Speaker 1: dye are all in the genus Dactylopius, although Cortes's soldiers
Speaker 1: called them Cocnelia cultivada. The females live on prickly pear cactuses.
Speaker 1: The wind blows them from cactus to cactus when they're
Speaker 1: still nymphs, and then as they mature, they attached themselves
Speaker 1: to the cacti. The females are harvested from the cacti
Speaker 1: and then dried, and then they are crushed and bathed
Speaker 1: in acid. And a pound of dye contains about seventy
Speaker 1: thousand of these little insects. Some people, in addition to
Speaker 1: pronouncing cockn eal two different ways, also use cockoneal and
Speaker 1: carmine interchangeably. Other people sort of differentiate between cockneal and
Speaker 1: carmine as two shades of red. Either way, carmine is
Speaker 1: also made from these same bugs. Soon after Europeans were
Speaker 1: introduced to these insects, the Habsburgs decided to start up
Speaker 1: a cockn eal business, and they started exporting cocon eal
Speaker 1: back to Spain, and the cockon heal trade then spread
Speaker 1: all over the world. In the sixteen hundreds, dyers started
Speaker 1: figuring out how to modify cockneal to make all kinds
Speaker 1: of other shades of red, so the demand for its skyrocketed,
Speaker 1: although occasionally it would dip a little bit thanks to
Speaker 1: various economic conditions or perhaps wars. Entrepreneurs in Europe kept
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to move cockeneal production out
Speaker 1: of the America's because, in addition to it being pretty
Speaker 1: expensive to ship these massive loads of of insects across
Speaker 1: the ocean, this was the height of piracy's golden age,
Speaker 1: which meant that ships that were carrying this red dye
Speaker 1: were always at risk. In the part of the Ocean
Speaker 1: that they needed to cross to get back to Spain.
Speaker 1: And although the insects themselves live in many parts of
Speaker 1: the world today thanks to very deliberate efforts to transplant them,
Speaker 1: actually getting a usable number of them to grow somewhere
Speaker 1: else turned out to be really quite a task. Ship
Speaker 1: after ship left the America has loaded down with plants
Speaker 1: and insects, only for something, you know, unt it to
Speaker 1: befall them along the way. Either the insects would die
Speaker 1: or their life cycle would be interrupted by the travel
Speaker 1: or a well meaning crew member would destroy those pesky
Speaker 1: bugs with salt water. Once the insects finally did make
Speaker 1: it to India, which was really one of one of
Speaker 1: the places people were hoping they could take off, it
Speaker 1: was without a crop of cacti for them to live on.
Speaker 1: They wound up surviving on a similar species that already
Speaker 1: lived in India. But even so, the Indian cockneal industry
Speaker 1: really never managed to supplant the American one. India was
Speaker 1: producing four thousand pounds of the die a year by
Speaker 1: sevente seven, but pretty much everyone in Europe thought it
Speaker 1: was vastly inferior to the die that was coming from
Speaker 1: Central and South America and cockneal is still used today,
Speaker 1: and one of those uses is actually food die, which
Speaker 1: is a little bit chagrinning and disturbing to people who
Speaker 1: don't like the idea of eating bugs. Unless you are
Speaker 1: allergic to them, there is no health risk and having
Speaker 1: them in your food. Yeah, I kind of look at
Speaker 1: that as one of those whenever I have a food
Speaker 1: revelation about, oh, this is actually a gross thing you've
Speaker 1: been consuming, I'm like, well, I've consumed it for years, right,
Speaker 1: And cocknell is one of the many things that goes
Speaker 1: in that category. We also have a few fancy blues
Speaker 1: to talk about, and I think blue is your favorite color,
Speaker 1: isn't it It is. That's not why we're talking about
Speaker 1: more than one fancy blue though. Egyptian blue is the
Speaker 1: oldest man made blue die and the oldest man made
Speaker 1: die in general that we know of, as its name suggests.
Speaker 1: That got to start in Egypt about three thousand years
Speaker 1: ago with the combination of a lime, copper, oxide, and quartz,
Speaker 1: and once these were put into a kiln in the
Speaker 1: right proportions, they were fired down to a fine powder
Speaker 1: that could be made into paints and dies. And if
Speaker 1: you are confused because earlier we said that ochre was
Speaker 1: the oldest thing. You can pretty much make an ochre
Speaker 1: paint out of straight up ochre and something to moisten
Speaker 1: it with, and this was a much more deliberate combining
Speaker 1: of multiple ingredients to make a die. Ultramarine has also
Speaker 1: been around for a really long time. It is made
Speaker 1: from lapis lazuli, which was primarily mined in Afghanistan. Making
Speaker 1: ultramarine from lapis lazuli was an intensely manual process. Powdered
Speaker 1: mineral would have to be repeatedly needed with lie to
Speaker 1: ultimately make this die. There's some evidence that the Chinese
Speaker 1: had access to ultramarine as early as the eighth century
Speaker 1: b c. There are some very ancient glazed beads that
Speaker 1: modern analysis has shown to have been made with ultramarine.
Speaker 1: There are also other blue pigments used in the glaze, though,
Speaker 1: so it is possible that the ultramarine was accidentally synthesized
Speaker 1: thanks to impurities in the kiln. We do know for
Speaker 1: sure that by the sixth century CE, deliberately made ultramarine
Speaker 1: inks appear in Byzantine manuscripts. Its popularity really took off
Speaker 1: during the Middle Ages in Europe, and because so much time, labor,
Speaker 1: and travel was involved in its production and distribution, it
Speaker 1: was exorbitantly expensive. This is one of the reasons it
Speaker 1: was used with very particular significance and religious artwork. The
Speaker 1: Virgin Mary often wears ultramarine blue clothing in medieval art,
Speaker 1: and the cost and expense is also why the French
Speaker 1: Society for the Encouragement of National Industry announced a prize
Speaker 1: for whoever could make a cost effective synthetic ultramarine in
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty four. And cost effective here meant less than
Speaker 1: three hundred francs per kilogram. I got into some drama
Speaker 1: about who eventually claimed that prize because there were two
Speaker 1: two people who independently of one another, came up with
Speaker 1: the same basic process for synthetic ultramarine, and then is
Speaker 1: often the case, artists didn't want to use the synthetic
Speaker 1: synthetic one because they thought it wasn't as good as
Speaker 1: the real one. Hellette is a blue dye that's very
Speaker 1: important in the Jewish tradition. It was traditionally used to
Speaker 1: tie blue threads used in the tassels that are in
Speaker 1: the corners of prayer shawls. This color comes from the
Speaker 1: glands of a snail, most likely Heliplex trunculus, and at
Speaker 1: first the color that the snails secretions produces kind of
Speaker 1: a brownish yellow. But if you soak cotton in a
Speaker 1: vat of it sort of vat, dye this cotton and
Speaker 1: then let it air dry in the sun, it turns blue.
Speaker 1: Talent is mentioned repeatedly in the Torah, and often in
Speaker 1: the same context as precious materials like gold and silk.
Speaker 1: The dye was so religiously important that the methods for
Speaker 1: making it were a very closely guarded secret. This unfortunately
Speaker 1: meant that the knowledge of how to produce it was
Speaker 1: lost around the seventh century as Islamic people's moved into
Speaker 1: the Eastern Mediterranean. Modern scholars have managed to recreate how
Speaker 1: to produce this color, but there's still some debate about
Speaker 1: whether it's exactly the same as the ancient hue described
Speaker 1: in these texts. And before we talk about another die
Speaker 1: that was definitely made from snails, we will take a
Speaker 1: brief break to talk about a word from a sponsor, stupendous.
Speaker 1: So we've already talked about some totally cost effective, widely
Speaker 1: available ways to make purple, but in the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: people got a little weird about purple, and one color
Speaker 1: purple in particular, as with tell It Tyrehne. Purple came
Speaker 1: from sea snails, specifically Balinus brand daris, previously known as
Speaker 1: Murix Brandaris, and this die was primarily made in the
Speaker 1: city of Tire in what is now Lemonon. Its height
Speaker 1: of popularity was during the time of the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: and it's mentioned at least fifty times in the Christian Bible.
Speaker 1: When it's living, this snail secretes a slightly toxic mukee
Speaker 1: is that's part of how it kills its prey. And
Speaker 1: if you crack open its shell you can puncture the
Speaker 1: mucus gland and get out a drop of that mucus.
Speaker 1: When this drop of mucus is exposed to light, it
Speaker 1: progresses through several colors on the blue green end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum before winding up purple. It took twelve thousand
Speaker 1: snails to make enough die to die one Roman toga. Consequently,
Speaker 1: an enormous hill of discarded shells formed outside the city
Speaker 1: of Tire, and today this hill has actually become usable land.
Speaker 1: It's home to houses, businesses, there's a cemetery there, and
Speaker 1: it's actually known as Murex Hill. There are still broken
Speaker 1: snail shells all around its base. That astounding twelve thousand
Speaker 1: snails number is why purple dye, especially tyrehene purple dye,
Speaker 1: was so expensive and associated only with the very rich,
Speaker 1: but by the year four hundred it's popularity had also
Speaker 1: made these snaps. E was pretty hard to find, so
Speaker 1: it became illegal for anyone who wasn't actually part of
Speaker 1: the royal family to wear tyree and purple because it
Speaker 1: was just too scarce, and you know, the royal royalty
Speaker 1: didn't want to lose their purple that they were so
Speaker 1: fond of. Both both Emperors Nero and Theo ds Is
Speaker 1: the Second considered the wearing of tyreean purple by Nod
Speaker 1: royalty to be punishable by death. Following the end of
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire, the color fell out of favor and
Speaker 1: people went back to the old standbys of indigo and liken.
Speaker 1: This is one of those situations where you kind of
Speaker 1: look at what it took to make this purple and
Speaker 1: the fact that you could make purple other ways. It
Speaker 1: was really it's not like that was the only purple
Speaker 1: that existed. It was just the only one that was
Speaker 1: so rare that people got a little strange about how
Speaker 1: they they were emotionally invested in it. Yeah, color status
Speaker 1: becomes a whole sociological studiable thing at that point. So
Speaker 1: eventually people figured out how to make synthetic dies. William
Speaker 1: Henry Perkin was an English chemist. He was actually trying
Speaker 1: to synthesize quinine, which we've talked about before. It's used
Speaker 1: to treat malaria in eighteen fifty six, and he stumbled
Speaker 1: across something else entirely, which was mauve die. And he
Speaker 1: was making this substance and it was kind of black
Speaker 1: and gross looking, and then he realized as he looked
Speaker 1: at it that it was actually kind of a pretty
Speaker 1: color in spaces in different spaces. Um This came to
Speaker 1: be known as analygine purple and as mauvine, and it
Speaker 1: was the first truly synthetic die. Perkin then used his
Speaker 1: newly discovered chemical process to set up his own die factory,
Speaker 1: and once Queen Victoria wore a move dressed to her
Speaker 1: daughter's wedding, which was in eighteen fifty eight, Europe was
Speaker 1: almost instantly caught up in mauve madness. Perkin then turned
Speaker 1: his eye to all kinds of other colors, and he
Speaker 1: ended up becoming very, very rich, but he gave most
Speaker 1: of his profits away to charity. This didn't instantly put
Speaker 1: an end to natural dies. There are still plenty of
Speaker 1: natural diyes being used even today. Many artists and artisans
Speaker 1: really resisted the idea of using synthetic colors, and at
Speaker 1: first analine was also very expensive. But the availability of
Speaker 1: synthetic dies did really change the playing field significantly when
Speaker 1: it came to color. You know why I spend so
Speaker 1: much time and effort farming cockneal If you can just
Speaker 1: make it pretty synthetic red, that's basically the same shade.
Speaker 1: And today colors have lost some of the connotations that
Speaker 1: they carried in earlier parts of history, especially in the
Speaker 1: industrialized world. It's pretty common knowledge that in many parts
Speaker 1: of the world, blue and purple were the colors of royalty.
Speaker 1: But today you can get a blue sweater for the
Speaker 1: same price as a brown sweater. You don't have to
Speaker 1: pay extra for a royal purple crayon. And today people
Speaker 1: might use the colors you wear to judge your personality
Speaker 1: or your sense of taste. But in places where synthetic
Speaker 1: dies are readily available, that doesn't actually extend to your
Speaker 1: actual social class or net worth. Colors are democratized. Anybody
Speaker 1: can have them. Yeah, and I read a really interesting
Speaker 1: paper that was about Yeah, people pretty much now will
Speaker 1: judge your color literacy, like whether they think the combination
Speaker 1: of colors you're wearing our tacky or two showy or
Speaker 1: something like that. Um, but that doesn't actually translate to
Speaker 1: how much those colors cost or what your actual social
Speaker 1: status is. Yes, it'll be uh, you know, to borrow
Speaker 1: from Project Runway your taste level. That's discussed so much
Speaker 1: your social standing. Thanks so much for joining us on
Speaker 1: this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
Speaker 1: if you heard an email address or a Facebook U
Speaker 1: r L or something similar over the course of the show,
Speaker 1: that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is
Speaker 1: History Podcast at I heart radio dot com. Our old
Speaker 1: health stuff works in mail address no longer works, and
Speaker 1: you can find us all over social media at missed
Speaker 1: in History. And you can subscribe to our show on
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, and
Speaker 1: wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you missed in
Speaker 1: History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.