Centaurea cyanus, Blue Bottle trial 1 & 2 2017-18

A (poor, sorry!) picture of the first trials for blue from my cornflowers. The top is plain cornflower petal juice squeezed out and painted on vellum surface Strathmore 300 Series Bristol board and the bottom is on the same bristol on a ground of lead white.

Cornflower blue references

Bachelor buttons, blue bottle, corn flowers, cornflower, corne flower, corn-floure, the flowers that grow among the corn...  We have a plethora of evidence that medieval pigment producers used Centaurea cyanus to make their own lovely, if fugitive, blue. Lets find some translated sources!

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lime from Oyster shells

Instructions for making oyster shells into lime aka quicklime exist in Mappae Clavicula (Smith and Hawthorne 51-2). I'll include the authors note too as I think it's an interesting judgement about the resulting purity of the product.

(Smith and Hawthorne 51-2)

Lime is CaO, calcium oxide. Slaked lime is basically just lime 'slaked', or mixed, with water turning it into calcium hydroxide Ca(OH)2.

Lime was useful medievally and broadly employed for painting (Merrifield 298-300) and building houses among other things.