Humans have been creating pigments for thousands of years, foraging for local materials that could be ground or extracted to create colors. The 17,000-year-old cave art in Lascaux, France, for example, is a mindbogglingly early example of human ingenuity when it comes to processing elements of nature, such as minerals, ochres, and shells, to create different hues.
As time went on, people continued to experiment and develop new dyes and paints, some of which were poisonous. Minerals sometimes contain toxic elements, so red often contained lead, cinnabar had mercury, and orpiment arsenic. Aristocratic Romans even used a face-lightening compound containing lead, and their blush tended to feature crushed mulberries or red vermillion, a.k.a. powdered cinnabar.
In the medieval period, plants also became more valuable as a means of producing pigments, especially as trade routes expanded and botanicals from different parts of the world could be obtained or seeded in gardens. The colors we see in illuminated manuscripts and associate with dyed fabrics became increasingly desirable during this era.
Blue and purple can be extracted from woad, ivy, and Portuguese laurel, while golden hues can be made from cornflower, crocus, myrrh, turmeric, and more. In the forthcoming Gold from Newton’s Apple Tree: Historical Recipes for Natural Inks, Paints, and Dyes, author Nabil Ali celebrates this long legacy of botanical pigments and the craft traditions that used them, with an emphasis on the Middle Ages.
Ali compiles recipes from as far back as the 3rd century B.C.E. to as recently as the last couple of decades, reproducing a wide range of scientific and artistic illustrations of a wide range of specimens from manuscripts and encyclopedic volumes. Published by Princeton University Press, Gold from Newton’s Apple Tree takes its title from an ink recipe made from using bark extracted from a descendant of Sir Isaac Newton’s apple tree, in which the brown ingredients transform into a rich yellow-gold.
The book is slated for release in April, and you can pre-order your copy in the Colossal Shop. You might also enjoy The Mushroom Color Atlas.
