Gerard's Herbal provenance explained

Gerard's Herbal which is "...simply an English translation of Dutch scholar Rembert Dodoen’s highly popular herbal of 1554." (Virginia edu website), 

Pandius

Reading along in Mappae Clavicula as translated by Smith, Cyril Stanley and Hawthorne, Daniel G. I keep seeing the term 'pandius' for mixes of different colors but not always the same hues, tints or combinations and then an explanation:

Smith, Cyril Stanley and Hawthorne, Daniel G.'s Mappae Clavicula (42)

Ibid 42-43

I'll have to go looking in the other translations of colors in medieval MS soon to see if they use 'pandius'...

medieval butterflies

Order of the Silver Brooch for Mariette de Bretagne

woad 2017

A brief word about indigo containing plants first. In my studies I have learned that indigo blue can be isolated from at least three different plants: woad (Isatis tinctoria), "bagdad" indigo (Indigofera tinctoria), and Japanese Indigo (Persicaria tinctoria/Polygonum tinctorum). The first time I tried Indigofera tinctoria I only got two plants to germinate at all and they yielded no blue. The same year, 2015, I grew Isatis tinctoria and yielded a little success but only sufficient florey in my vat to paint out one circle of blue that I evidently didn't take pictures of. 2016 was the summer we moved. There were no extant gardens on the property and not enough energy to install them until 2017.

In 2017 I grew woad, Isatis tinctoria, in three large red planters in the front garden at the new house in Windham. I was more careful to feed the plants well in 2017. Two of the pots were only "50/50" mix from the garden center who said "It's really about 70/30 loam and Benson's. Any richer would burn your plants." And the third pot included amazing compost from an acquaintance of my mom who makes it with kitchen scraps and mess from his chicken coop.

Medieval Manuscript Garlic references 2017

The juice of hard necked garlic, Allium sativum, grown across the world in northern latitudes, may be used for all sorts of culinary applications as well as a gilding binder and more.

 Allium sativum scapes growing 2017

 

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More Saffron yellow resources

From Booke of Secrets:

Another yellow

Mix saffron with the yolke of an eg, and it maketh a faire shining colour. Otherwise.
Put saffron and alum into a clout, and put vineger into it, and strain it out: or take saffron, the yolke of an eg, gum Arabike and alum, and mix them together.

And another from a translation of Simone's MS 1793 in the Getty's Historical Painting:

Wallert 1996