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!

Click "Read More" below to continue!

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.

Sambucus spp. Elderberries

You know when you think you know what you're talking about and then 'Eureka!' you decide your assumptions/theories/plans were wrong. Oops!

I keep reading about anthocyanin pigments (Neven 173-4) and how they can be produced by various things including elderberries. All of a sudden I went back to a different book and my mind opened up. Sambucus spp. are not always what we want to grow to make Elderberry wine or pie... 'Dwarf elder', which is what one of the medieval treatises calls for, is a different plant!

Sambucus ebulus
Dwarf Elder, otherwise known as Danewort "is the most active pharmacologically... it's fruit should be considered poisonous. The dark purple berries are certainly violently purgative; in the Middle Ages both these and the roots or root bark were used as such.
...
The Anglo-Saxons and Gauls employed Dwarf Elder berries as a blue dye, and this is now the main use for this herb." (Stuart 258)

So... I guess I want to try to grow S. ebulus too!

Smith and Hawthorne 41

I shall have to mine the references of Encyclopedia of Herbs and Herbalism (Stuart) before I decide that their S. ebulus dye claim is accurate. I've just found another source that uses S. niger for their blue (Wallert 1993). And thus, we're back to common names making research difficult.

lulax means indigo

Looking for another 'vegetable blue' I found this reference. I have seen 'lulax'  few times and see that Mappae Clavicula as translated by Smith and Hawthorne has this note:

or does it...

perhaps it just means a certain color blue?

Smith and Hawthorn 55

'vergaut'? Blue and yellow make green!

The term 'vergaut' was introduced to me by Elena Wyth when she asked a question about mixing indigo and orpiment on Facebook. I hadn't come across it before, so I went to the books!

There seem to be many medieval instructions for mixing orpiment and indigo but few call it vergaut, as far as I can see. Read more below to see what a brief search helped me find.

indigo

Indigo (Indigofera tinctoria)
                 4/13/15 Soaked seeds in water overnight.
                 4/14/15 Planted 2 seeds each in three 4" pots,
                         three seeds each in three 4" pots, none of these germinated.
                Planted more outside in pots 5/30/15, two seeds germinated and grew.
                  Plant matter never yielded blue

Medieval Mappae Clavicula Elderberry Paint Recipe

Last year I posted some medieval recipes for blue paint from elderberries here.  And the testing of it as blue paint here.

I am excited to expand the post to include pictures of a manuscript of the Mappae Clavicula, one of the medieval recipe sources I used.  The manuscript is held at Rakow Research Library which is part of The Corning Museum of Glass.   The entire manuscript can be downloaded from their website here.

This picture is provided by the courtesy of the Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass.

This table of contents entry is toward the beginning of the parchment leaves.  The numbers were penned in red ink probably after at least most of the book was written. We'll see the red ink again later.

To me the latin content entry reads:

lxxxiii
Indicum colorem facere.

Which can be translated as

eighty-three
To make an indigo color.

In the manuscript we find the page with the description of how to make the blue color.  Note the different colored inks used again.  This time perhaps to designate titles versus instruction.

This picture is also provided by the courtesy of the Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass.

Mostly trusting and heavily relying on the Latin edition found on Corning's website here, on page 28 which can be accessed by typing in 32 of 70 pages in the downloadable pdf, the abbreviated latin probably reads as:

Indicum colorem facere.  Succum de ba(c)cis ebuli collige et diligenter sicca at solem de hoc quod remanserit fac pastillos cum parvo aceti et vini et utere 

According to a magazine I interlibrary loaned, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society held at Philidelphia for promoting useful knowledge, New Series Volume 64 part 4 written by Smith and Hawthorne in 1974 in the article "Mappae Clavicula, a little key to the world of Medieval Techniques", it can be translated as:

97. Making indigo pigment.  Collect the juice of dwarf elderberries and dry it thoroughly in the sun.  From what remains make pastilles with a little vinegar and wine, then use it.

I would have translated "Indicum color facere." as "make indigo color" but high school Latin class was a long time ago now. Perhaps the disagreement with what number of the recipe has to do with either different manuscript versions, mis-translation (probably by me, I'm pretty new at deciphering manuscripts) or the numbering being added either after the book was done by the original scribe or by a different scribe, perhaps even at a different time. I have not finished reading all of the resources on the internet about Mappae Clavicula; maybe I'll eventually find more theories about the differences but I wanted to share the great references provided by the Corning Museum of Glass and it's Rakow Research Library. Go check out that manuscript; it's great!

Iris for pigment References

These are the references I used during my iris experiments.  I tried to recreate medieval paint an pigment recipes using the iris from my garden.  Those experiments can be found here and the paint results with them here.

You may note that they call them 'blue lilies' with astonishing regularity.  This will make noticing other references easier.

 A 14th century anonymous treaty De Arte Illuminandi pg 6-7

"(Green) may be seen... in blue lilies, which are called iris, and yet are changed into a very pure green color by treatment.
The color is made from these lilies as follows.  Take these fresh flowers in the springtime when they are blooming and pound them in a marble or bronze mortar and squeeze the juice with a cloth into a glazed porringer.  And in this juice soak other linen cloths, clean and soaked, once or twice, in a solution of rock alum and dried.  And when the cloths are thoroughly saturated with the juice of the lilies in this way, let them dry in the shade, and keep them between the leaves of books; for a very lovely green, suitable on parchment is made out of this juice, made in this way by combining it with gallarino.  And note that after the cloths are dry, if they are again soaked in this juice and dried, they will be better." pg. 6-7


Daniel V. Thompson's  The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting

"The chief rival of sap green in late medieval manuscript pianting was iris green. This was made from the juice of iris flowers, sometimes mixed with alum and thickened, like sap green, but more often prepared as a clothlet. Bits of cloth were dipped into the juice of iris flowers and dried, again and again, until they contained a sufficient quantity of the color." pg. 171

Mary Merrifield's Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Arts of Painting 

"Lily or Iris green (verde giglio). --This pigment was sometimes prepared for use by dipping piece os linen (pezzette) into the juice and then preserving them dry." pg. ccxix

Mary Merrifield's Original Treatises pg. 422

Mary Merrifield's Original Treatises pg.504

Mary Merrifield's Original Treatises pg. 658 Paduan Manuscript De' Colori In General

Mary Merrifield pg 678  Paduan Manuscript Colori Diversi

Mary Merrifield pg 684 Paduan Manuscript Colori Diversi

And Mappae Clavicula has a recipe for blue from iris: 

Illustrating that there are iris all over the world, some of them in different habitats than wet ones, is a handout by the U.S.D.A. called Garden Irises.

blue pigment from woad

Woad (Isatis tinctoria) seeds were purchased from Sand Mountain Herbs.  Having read that this plant is a heavy feeder, classified as an invasive weed in certain states and that the water shed off the leaves may be a germination inhibitor for other seeds, I planted the seeds in shallow drills in two giant plastic plant pots on a gravel covered patio separated from any other gardens by a paved driveway.

Economically frugal as always I planted the seeds in the soil that was on sale, Miracle-Gro.  And fertilized it every month with liquid miracle grow.  Next year, in hopes to yield more blue I will plant the seeds in an organic, rich mix, fertilize organically and harvest the leaves earlier.

Extracted from the leaves, indican and isatan B can be converted into indigo!

Jenny Dean's Wild Color explains four methods to dye using a woad vat.  I decided for the first year I would try Method 1. It involves washing soda and sodium hydrosulfite (Sodium dithionite/Na2S2O4).  Had I known how bad the hydrosulfite smelled I would not have ordered any.  Hindsight is 20/20, right?  It came in two layers of plastic and two of cardboard too.  Not sure where to store it, it's wrapped in four layers of plastic in plastic storage drawers.

I soaked the fabrics overnight in a gallon of bottled water.  The water turned a little yellow/brown and tested between pH 5 and 6.  Possibly because I didn't clean it enough.  Cleaning the fabrics before dyeing is called scouring.  Next time the fibers will be scoured more thoroughly.  I've read online that uneven dyeing is a common problem for new dyers and perhaps why my colors came out unevenly.  The morning I harvested the woad leaves there was more plant material than I thought so I threw more fiber and fabric in to soak.

Harvested the woad leaves from the plants in the two pots.  Looks like there were only about seven plants but they yielded a surprising 428g of leaves.  I cut them up using scissors and poured nearly boiling (190F) water over them.

I let them steep for the recommended hour and got my sherry colored liquid!

Pouring the whole concoction through a strainer into a bucket, I reserved the leaves for a second dye bath.

Letting the dye vat cool to 120F seemed to take for ever!  Once it had, I sprinkled about two teaspoons of washing soda to turn it to the essential "greeny-brown" color. and introduced air with an electric mixer.  The bubbles changed from clear to blue quite quickly.  There was not an abundance of bubbles like I hoped but what bubbles there were I skimmed off and ladled in to a glass bowl.

In retrospect I should have saved some of this liquid and let the blue settle out to try to make my blue paint.

Daniel V. Thompson talks about the flower in The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting.  "In the course of dyeing a scum collects on the surface of the vat, and this was called in Latin the spuma or flos indici, and in English, "florey", or the flower of woad.  This foam or flower was skimmed off and dried and used, either alone or in more or less elaborate compounds, under the name of indigo in the Middle Ages." (Thompson 2: 138)

There was very little foam on the surface.  The foam dried quickly and was only enough to paint a tiny bit.  I think the leaves were harvested too late and the dyeing potential had decreased as we can see by the weak results on the fibers.

Almost everything on the linen got washed away when I rinsed and washed the fiber and fabric as recommended.  The cotton produced a pretty blue cloud effect.  The unevenness on those pieces can be attributed to incomplete scouring.  The wool wasn't scoured and soaked properly and picked up dye patchily so there's variegated wool yarn.  The silk was dipped twice and gave me the most even result.  The end shade of that piece was s soft baby blue.

Next time I'll dye at the peak plant health with hopefully more plant material and definitely with more effectively scoured fabric and wool.

And here is the 2017 trial.

Elderberry juice Part 2: Painting

On Strathmore 300 series Bristol board with a vellum finish I drew 1/2" circles with a pencil and painted circles with a 20/0 liner brush from the resulting pigments as described next to each circle.

Elderberry Blue - Part 1

Found out elderberries were growing in Gray and asked my mother to save me some.  Not only did she save me some but brought me a bagful on Thursday, August 6th, 2015!

These medieval recipes concerning elderberry interested me: 

 Above:  From an ILLed copy of the Mappae Clavicula (probably 12thC) translated and published by Transactions of the American Philosophical Society held at Philidelphia for Promtoing Useful Knowledge

New Series Vol 64 part 4, 1974.

A Booke of Secrets, 1596

My Redaction or interpretation:  Grind chalk with the juice of elderberries, strain it through a cloth, put a little alum water into it, let it dry and keep it until you need it.

Safety first, everyone! Through the entire process I wore gloves, safety glasses and a dust mask.  Elderberries are not toxic but you don't want to breathe or touch alum or alum water.

On Friday I stripped the berries from the branches and rinsed them yielding 174g berries.  Giving up on the "distilled water only" plan I had had when I realized I'd rinsed them with tap water already, I added 100g tap water and brought them to a simmer in a glass sauce pan, simmering 15minutes on low.  The berries weren't the freshest but a little dehydrated.  I hoped simmering with water would reconstitute any moisture loss and provide an efficient way to extract the juice.  During the simmering and at the end I squished the berries using a potato masher to crush them and allow the water to get into the berries.  After 15min, I shut off the heat and proceeded to prepare my calcium sources.

Following A Booke of Secrets:
I chose the whitest pieces of clam and egg shells in my possession, not considering that I'd be straining the liquid away from the shells as end product pigment.  Better safe than sorry?  One at a time I ground them as fine as I could with a big mortar and pestle and ended up with about 6.5g each, set aside in plastic containers until I was ready for them.

 

Above: Clam shells, pulverized with the marble pestle and then ground to a fine powder.

 Egg shells, pulverized to break them up and then ground to a fine powder.

By now my elderberry sauce has cooled enough to work with so smash the berries again with a potato masher. I poured it into cheesecloth resting in a canning funnel over a jar.  With gloved hands I scraped all of the berries and juice out of the sauce pan and into the cheesecloth.

I proceeded to squeeze all of the liquid I could from the mass by picking up the four corners of the cheesecloth and squeezing with a gloved hand.  This yeilded about 110g liquid.  I portioned it into four quantities: three thirty gram and one fifteen gram portions all in clean glass jars.

One 30g part went first outside "in the sun" but I thought better of leaving it open for the ants and bees and brought it in to go on top of the fridge under a lamp and fan.  The liquid is a beautiful berry red.

I poured the contents of one of the 30g jars into the clean and dry mortar and poured in the prepared egg shell powder, mixing and grinding it together with the pestle.  At this point I decided I needed something else important and ran away for several minutes.  When I returned the liquid was clearly a different color than the red of plain elderberry juice!

I dutifully poured it through a new piece of cheese cloth resting over the canning funnel back into the original jar which I had prepared with 2g of 1:10 alum water (100g water: 10g alum, mixed thoroughly). *THIS IS THE WRONG ALUM, NEXT TIME I SHOULD TRY THE 'CORRECT' ALUM, ALUMINUM POTASSIUM SULFATE*

When the elderberry/calcium water hit the alum water it reacted!  It changed color from the red to a pretty greenish blue and bubbled up!

I stirred it with a wooden stick and set it up under the fan on the fridge.

Washed and dried the mortar and pestle and walked away to let it finish drying.

Excited to see if the clam shell would cause the same reaction I raced back after a few minutes to combine the last 30g of juice and ground shells.  I poured the powder into the juice and ground them together.  Wanting to simulate the same amount of time it took to ignore the first Calcium Carbonate reaction I walked away in search of labels for my jars.  Again when I returned, the color had finished changing and was definitely more blue than before. 

 I tried to decant as I had before into a piece of cheese cloth in the canning funnel.  I had chosen the size of my cloth poorly and the whole piece, clam shell bits and pigment liquid proceeded to fall into the jar.  I squeezed out the bit of liquid and material into that jar and prepared a new, clean jar with a bigger piece of cheese cloth over the top.  I may have lost a little bit but not a lot.  I had not prepped the jar with alum water for fear that the cloth would fall in so at least it was only elderberry and shell.

Wiping each wooden mixing stick on a paper towel we can see the two chalk substitutes next to one another:

Egg shell is on the left and clam shell on the right.

I added alum water in proportion to the others to the smallest jar (1g alum water to 15g juice) as a control.  I expect the color in that jar not to change.

To see pictures of paints from these experiments go here.

Iris experiments 2015

Today (3/26/16) I taught my period pigments class again and we played with some of the pigments I made in 2015.  Re-reading this post today I realized that I have learned a lot since then and need to update you all with a new post.  I promise this will happen soon after Easter, aka tomorrow.

In the meantime you can explore my page of references, here.

Collecting the blue iris blossoms as they bloomed, May 30th, 2015 for over a week, I ended up with several hundred flower heads in two gallon sized zip-lock bags.  Taking the advice of Wendy Feldberg, I froze them for later use.  Though there were not freezers in medieval Europe, this seemed like a reasonable compromise with modern obligations.

The chemicals and linen I ordered from Dharma Trading Co. arrived!  I used the wrong alum in these recipes, aluminum sulfate.  It should be 'rock alum' which is evidently potassium aluminum sulfate.  In 2016 I used the correct alum with pretty much the same results.  Blue clothlets when they were wet changing to green the more they dried and painting out green.

I washed all of the linen with modern washing machine soap (Free and Clear Tide) and a 1/4 cup of white vinegar.
Not sure of the weights of medieval linen I ordered a yard of each of the three weights available from Dharma Trading Co. 3.5oz, 5oz and 8oz for making clothlets.

In the Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting by Daniel V. Thompson, iris green is described (171).  Clothlets are mentioned but not well defined and the process is never described.

Courtesy of Clair Turner I learned that the Glossary of the British Library describes it in depth:

CLOTHLET

A piece of cloth impregnated with PIGMENT (generally a vegetable dye). A portion of such cloth, when soaked in a little BINDING MEDIUM, releases its colorant and produces an artist's pigment. Clothlets are called petiae in Latin and pezze or pezzette in Italian; bisetus folii refers to clothlets dyed with folium, or turnsole, extract. Clothlets were a convenient way of carrying or shipping vegetal pigments, and they were especially popular from the fourteenth century on, with the growth of the textile trade. Glazes of vegetal dyes were often used to enhance other colours in book ILLUMINATION, since they created a rich, glowing, and transparent effect.


Randy Asplund then clued me in to Mary Merrifield's Original Treatices and there I found my recipes. 

Based somewhat on the recipe translations in her book I made clothlets and prepared egg shells and clam shells with iris juice and a pinch of alum.
I was excited to get started and in a hurry to get something accomplished so I did what all of my friends and family would tell you I do with all of the recipes I work with:  combine techniques from several sources and hope for the best, modifying behavior for the next round based on results!
Also found references in the anonymous treatise  De Arte Illuminandi (translated by Varney pgs 7, 15).

And the paint results from August can be found here:

Summary of medieval pigments for a class handout

Medieval Pigments

Reds:

Minium (red lead), Vermillion (HgS), Brazilwood (Caesalpinia echinata), 

cynople (Brazilwood in chalk?), Folium/Turnsole (Chrozophora tinctoria)(acid), Madder (Rubia tinctorum), Kermes, Red Ochre, Cochineal, Naturally occurring Cinnabar, Stick Lac, Ivy Lac, Dragonsblood (sap of Pterocarpus draco or Dracoena draco), grain (Coccus ilicis stings Quercus coccifera and dies on it)

Blues:

Silver Blue (a type of verdigris), Egyptian Blue Frit (recipe lost after the fall of Byzantium),

Indigo (Indigoferra), Woad (Isatis tinctoria), Lapis Lazuli, Ultramarine (purified lapis lazuli),

Ultramarine Ash, Azurite, Cornflower Blue, Bilberry Blue, Folium/Turnsole (Chrozophora tinctoria) (alkaline)

Greens:

Malachite, Verdigris, Terre Vert (gluconite and celadonite), Prasinus (?De Diversis Artibus),

Iris Green, Rue Green, Cabbage Green, Leek Green, Buckthorn (or Sap) Green (Rhamnus spp),

Black Nightshade (leaves), Caprifolium Seed Green, Vergaut (indigo + orpiment)

Yellow:

Saffron, Lead Tin (I) Yellow, Weld (Reseda Luteola), Yellow Ochre, Orpiment (As2S3),

Realgar (orangey As4S4), Buckthorn Yellow (unripe), Massicot Yellow/ Litharge (Yellow Lead), Naples Yellow (Lead-Antimony Oxide) volcanic activity, Violet Yellow (unnamed in De Arte Illuminandi), Turmeric Yellow, Black Poppy Yellow (De Arte Illuminandi), Mosic/Musive Gold (SnS2)

Purples:

Lichen (Rocella tinctoria), Tyrian Purple (Shellfish purple from Muricidae which is ph sensitive),

Elderberry Juice, Wild Poppy Violet (Strasburg Manuscript recipe), Rose Purple (Mappae

Clavicula, species unspecified), Purple Fluorite

Whites:

Ceruse/Lead White, Bone White, Chalk White, Gypsum

Browns:

Brown Ochers (Umber, Raw Siena...)

Blacks:

Carbon Black, Vine Black, Lamp Black

This is a summary from http://wiesenfeuer.ansteorra.org/links/artsandsciences/medievalpigments.pdf and

https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~cochinea/pdfs/a-baker-04-pigments.pdf

Who are using

Mappae Clacicula, 9-12^th century

On Divers Arts Theophilus, 12^th century

Liber de Coloribus Illuminatorum Siue Pictorum, also known as Sloane MS No. 1754, 14^th century

De Arte Illuminandi, Naples, Biblioteca Nazional, MS XII.E.27, 14^th century

Liber diversarum arcium, 14^th century

Il Libro dell'Arte Cennini, 15^th century

Strasburg Manuscript, 15^th century

YIS Adrienne d'Evreus 207-651-5837 adrienne.devreus@gmail.com