This "first chapter" (or first theme) of the Conversations is basically a sort of web forum entrance, or we may say also, a kind of blog.

Its presentation can be distinguished though by the indentation of the text, used here so as to avoid the occurrence of an incomprehensible whole (as it happens very often) because classified only by date, and where it is easy to get lost. More, here, one’s interventions occur most often in the middle of someone else’s, in a very dynamic way. Consequently, usual forms are not relevant.

Quite a particular writing, then, but which is consistent enough to be read in a linear fashion. And let the digressions act as recreations!

Here, five people start talking about a theme: dyes, and they explain their points of view, evoke their personal experiences, drifting freely towards other dimensions of the visual arts and neighbouring domains. From tinctorial processes to Cleopatra’s story, to Akrotiri’s remains in Thera, or to colour as food, the gap between technique and culture has been quickly bridged

Speakers :

••• Anne Varichon

(writer, ethnologist, archeologist)

••• Inge Boesken Kanold

(visual artist, expert in murex purple)

••• Jean-Louis

(physico-chemist at the CNRS,
See the Dialogs at Dotapea)

••• Jean-Pierre Brazs

(visual artist, writer)

Moderator :

••• Emmanuel Luc

Note : the links keep their usual colour on Art Réalité.com

Emmanuel : Anne, while leafing through your book Colours, pigments and dyes in people’s hands whose outline is organized around each colour successively, I wanted to ask you a transverse question. Referring to a technique, or rather to thousands of techniques : dyes, dyeing.

According to you, is it possible to do a synthesis, to group the different processes used ever and everywhere in order to try to get a holistic view that will allow us to know quite noticeably what we are talking about, for a start from a material, physical point of view?

Anne : I think it is . These processes have all a share of unpredictable by coming from "living" therefore moving substances. Only the traditional dyers’ very precise knowledge was able to predict and correct possible drifts. These techniques share also, for many of them, the necessity of putrefaction, of disintegration, to become efficient. This is thereby the case for all dyes done with fermentation vats.

(second dialog)

Inge : It concerns indigo vats and purple vats because they need the reduction process.

Emmanuel : We have a first group already.

Anne : N.B. I do not know if this partitioning in groups is really scientific. Dominique Cardon, she classifies the tinctorial substances function of the chemical group to which belong(s) the colouring principle(s) they contain. But it is true nevertheless that the dyeing methods can also be declined in more or less three main groups:

- Direct dyes (see below)

- Mordant dyes

- And vat dyes.

(first dialog)

How to define categories of tinctorial processes?

Anne : Numerous are also those which need time to be able to take effect (walnut stain for example) or which must be assisted by the addition of various products in order to accelerate the deliverance or the fixation of the tinctorial principle (madder vats).

Emmanuel : We would have two other groups then.

Anne : At last, almost all of them require a preliminary work: reducing wood to sawdust, chewing plant seeds, grating turmeric, filtering achiote pulp...

Emmanuel : And which dyes would not require any labour? Opposite, in the drawing/painting domain, there is, among so many others, the example of black chalk.

For thousands of years, it has been possible to find a natural block and draw with it without preparing it. There is chalk, too, if not too siliceous, maybe certain hematite and some other materials immediately “ready to use" and of good demeanor. It seems that it is not really the case about dyes but for some exceptions concerning only non-colourfast substantives like turmeric.

Jean-Louis : I can be wrong but I thought that all these dyes were done in an aqueous milieu. Then, if no chemical reaction aiming to make the pigment indissoluble so as to entrap it in the fibres (indigo) or to bind it chemically to the textile fibre (madder) interferes, the coloration will not be stable, notably with water. In my opinion there is not really any dye that holds to the fibres in only one soak step. Correct me if my intuition is wrong!

Anne : Some "direct" dyes  can be completed by mere soaking. This is the case for example with tinctorial muds or with henna.

(first dialog)

Anne : Even the less mysterious dyes are amazing, were it only because they often hide their power. Hope was awfully necessary to finally dig out some blue in the pastel plant.

Jean-Pierre : The matter of labour is of course central as soon as we get onto an aesthetic discipline by means of technique.

I am among those who consider that a pictorial technique (matching up know-how with materials as part of a project) is charged with meanings as well as the visual result. The art piece is the junction point between two works: the viewer’s and the maker’s. From the artist’s point of view, every step of the making has a dimension which is both technical (for instance assuring the solidity of the piece) and visual (for instance, using the local modification of reflected light). Broadly speaking, in the implementation we can therefore talk about concomitant visual and physico-chemical constructions.

Time and

work: distinction criterions?

We maybe have to add another type of construction (of "symbolic" order?) which would give a particular signification to each phase of the elaboration of the work. We may then speak of the manner of "loading” the work. (I think that Anne could have things to tell us about this subject). In that case the time spent is somehow an investment, a strong connection between oneself and the object. It is maybe consequently important to spend a lot of time looking for materials, preparing surfaces or mediums. This labor is an ingathering (of materials and knowledge) and a transformation of both matter and operator.

(third dialog)

Anne : Your remark about " symbolic order" constructions is judicious. With equivalent whites, the Dogons will then choose either chalk or lizard (and not any) excrement, function of the ritual in which the white colour will be efficient. The binding agent may also be sought according to criterions which result more from culture than from chemistry. At the time of aboriginal initiations, initiates will bind ochre with fat extracted from shark liver or with fat from a kangaroo tail. And that can go until the containers in which the tinctorial products, pigments or blends, are enclosed.

Symbolic value of consented effort

There is a lot to say about that.

And also about knowledges. One mentions often discoveries that are made outside a regular framework as due to luck. This is negating not only the researches often done with method and perseverance during generations, but also an ability to the transmission of a knowledge, that occurred often without making use of the writing.

(first dialog)

Anne : But for a genuine scientific classification of dyeing modes, this is Dominique Cardon who will be able to answer you.

Emmanuel : Yes. We just present an overview here.

In parallel to this technical sight, do you think that we can also grasp the different approaches, the processes out of which the humans chose to dye (or to dye themselves)?

Time spent in research

Anne : Yes. Because colour is a language. And a food, also.

Emmanuel : A food ?

Anne : I mentioned colour as a food insomuch as, beyond its function of codes apt to be deciphered within a society, it works also aside of any exterior sight. Thus, the red tint of mercurochrome soothes the child who got his knee scratched in the same way as the initiate is anointed with red ochre at the time of the rite when, leaving a condition for another, he is vulnerable, weak. The red colour, even besides a threat to the body, sustains the principle of life, reinforces valiance. So it is for the custom of dyeing their joints with achiote, practiced in some Amazonian ethnos by the hunters. By doing so, they gain greater skill and velocity. Of course, a color-free mercurochrome would be as efficient. Of course no substance in achiote or in ochre will develop the body potential but the colour alone works.

At last, we all had the experience of emotions related to a colour. Because it revives a memory, because it does some good or makes a fear real. There are days when we fancy a particular dish, or fruit, because our body needs a particular kind of vitamins. With colours, the same kind of impulse can occur. So most of the time, we walk in a shop et go out with a jumper, a dress, socks of a particular colour, sometimes even if the size is wrong. And here, this is not about psychology of colours but we only have to observe– for the moment –  that colour refreshes, feeds something in us that needs to be fulfilled, and that whichever our gender, culture or age. This is a personal history, relating to the intimate and which must be exempt from any generalization to remain free.

Colour is a food

Emmanuel : Inge we are talking about dyes and you, you realize an artistic work with murex purple. On paper mostly, I guess, but what can you say about other supports for this legendary dye whose relationship with time, history, research, is especially noteworthy (read the article of Dotapea)?

Inge : No, this is not mostly on paper.

I started on ancient linen sheets. Sheets and stains, they know each other; love, life, death, this is courting. That leaves traces on the sheets. Fabric and tinting substance become one. But, I do not dye like the dyer. I, I want to paint with the murex. To paint its secret. On the canvas which became a support in a different way. The stain I create does not talk about textile, silk, wool, but about colour, about murex purple, luxury colour, full of surprise and mysteries. Each stain has its personal brilliance, has had another life, and has a different identity, produces another hue. Together, they play music and I, I am conductor. I place them where I want, they follow me. Does the murex know that it dies for glory ? That it never has been otherwise ? (As long as we were interested in its colour....)

Of course, I have used paper. But the stains were more precise, well marked, well-disciplined. So, I invented working possibilities. When the murex gave itself to the paper, its juice was water-white and I wrote the time on the side, on the same paper. I noted the yellow, first sign of life in colour, then the green, the blue, the red violet or violet blue or, or... One or two hours had passed, the annotations taking a shape of drawings, witnessing something that nobody except me had lived and seen. My secret.

Until then, I used to work the active juice, the gland liquid, mixed with the juice of the sea. Watercolour with sea water... on canvas, on paper.

A prestigious example keeping in with time in an exemplary way: the purple

But my goal, for a long time, had been the pigment, the purple powder, to have it for my use, anytime. Going pass the active juice, full of disturbing proteins on the way to the …spiritual colour. Symbol of beauty, of power, of the lost past. Reaching this goal. Although the goal is not vital, this is the way that makes me create, that makes me discover. On this way of discovery, I used Antiquity dyers’ knowledge. By reinventing their professional secret. To understand, to go further still. For sixteen years I have been touching only one colour. So, I was in need of stimulants to create, to pass on.

When I got it , this long-desired pigment, I wondered: and now ? Does this colour, the purple, become a tool like every blue, red, yellow ? Impossible!

And this is where I am stuck.

Emmanuel : According to you is it possible to dye wood purple? Which wood would you recommend? Do you know if there are historic antecedents? For example did people dye wood in the cedar country, rubber tree in the Purpura patula country?

Inge : I do not know.

Years ago, a man (a Russian) phoned me to ask if the juice (secretion of the glands) could be used to dye violin wood. I did try, without result.

I assume that it is also possible to work on canvas, but then comes the question of conservation. It is absolutely necessary to paste on the canvas to protect it. Do you think that a pasted canvas could be dyed purple and give lasting results?

Inge : Do you mean ordinary canvas for painters ?

Emmanuel : Yes.

Research : is it always the essential motor?

Inge : First, dyeing a canvas purple should be impossible. Who can - today - dye a canvas with genuine purple ? In which size ? The story of the sails of Cleopatra’s dyed with purple, seems to me a beautiful legend, even if, at that time, miracles were done with this colour.

(third dialog)

Emmanuel : Why would have it be impossible for the immensely rich Cleopatra to have a sail dyed purple at a time when this tinctorial substance was mastered? Isn’t that likely ? Besides, where does this legend come from?

Inge : the sails can have been dyed item by item and sawn together afterwards. I was always picturing these sails very large, huge and I ran up against that size. How-to dye the whole bolt upright?

Then, I bent over the probable necessity of proceeding bit by bit. However a question remained: Of which matter were those sails genuinely made up ? Certainly not denim, Segeltuch, say the German [cotton fabric, for jeans] which is very heavy-set, too thick to (be) dye(d).

Though, in Dominique Cardon’s writings we find: "...A the battle of Actium, the sails of Cleopatra’s galley are also dyed purple..."

And she goes on: "We hardly dare to imagine the slaughter of seashells represented by such pieces of fabric. But we can also assume that the ground colour was (at least partially) obtained with archil, alkanet, blackberries or blueberries, the most common components in purple adulteration. In fact, at that time, the false purple industry takes hold of an expansion parallel to the genuine purple industry, as the alchemical papyruses bear witness of it from the third century AD, with the Stockholm Papyrus and the Leyden Papyrus. While giving the most extravagant recipes in order to imitate purple, the latter acknowledges however the animal nature of genuine purple : ' the yellow water that dyes blue, this is the seashell'."

Emmanuel : Cleopatra had very likely political reasons for showing thus her might by « external signs » and symbolic acts. From the donkey milk baths to the episode of the huge pearl dissolved in vinegar under Mark Antony’s eyes, all that seems to have had exactly the same meaning. Moreover – this leads us back directly to our theme -, the queen, by making herself a chemist or a biologist in the pearl episode, by using purple and other dyes, was proving her power over the matter, demonstrating symbolically the degree of knowledge of her people.

This is politics at the highest level of elegance !

You can read a short and rather nice text on Dialogus2.org : link.

We can 'stain' a canvas as I described it previously, but no one can afford to do like in the old days, that is to dye fabric. And why, besides ? « You do not cook caviar like potatoes. »

Why dyeing a canvas purple ? Purple is a precious, high luxury product. It would be best to use false purple like in papyrus times if we want a violet canvas ground. The question « to continue with which colour then ? » remains opened.

Emmanuel : Yes, a use of purple « in the manner of painting » seems unlikely, so I ask you another question : is it possible to dye, to "purple" a glue, directly? I am not talking about a blend binder + purpurissum but more about a glue that would possibly resist to soaking and fermentation. It is important because it would enable an application on the canvas that would resist to time.

Inge : Well, you got it !

I’ll go back to that a bit further in this text.

Emmanuel : Since there is only one step from glue to binder, do you think that the Byzantine purple ink, (of such a complex use according to what you told me), contained a binding element or do you think that it was pure; was it less an ink than a genuine dye?

Inge : Let us say 'juice', not dye. Dye means that there is bath [vat, fermentation].

This ink – From what I understand – has been used in Byzantium during the heir’s nomination ceremony, then at the time of his sacrament!

At the beginning, the juice of the fresh gland was yellow/green and one wrote quickly what needed; then it was necessary to cover the writing with a heavy stone to stop the oxidation. When later, the heir became king or emperor, the stone was lifted and the metamorphosis from yellow/green to purple ended : here is the king! Adding glue or another binder did not do anything to the whole matter. It did not change anymore, I guess.

Emmanuel : The question of the support occurred inevitably from the first uses of this dye. I really would like to know which fabrics have been used in the past (notably before silk) and also... what do people do nowadays? For example do you know which fabrics Takako Terada [great Japanese specialist of animal purple, more specifically in the textile domain] uses ?

Inge : People dyed mostly fibres, raw wool, not spun, possibly not carded (this wool absorbs better than spun wool) and they weaved afterwards, I think. The quality of the dye was increased because of this process. Wool, above all, but silk, too. Takako Terada dyes silk threads and embroiders them.

Today, we experiment multifibres [associations of fibres of different nature], a small elongated piece containing all kinds of fibre, nylon, cotton, wool, polyester, etc., in equal-width strips. Removed from the dye bath, each strip turns up with another colour variant!

Emmanuel : About paper, as you wrote it recently, the problem is for it to be “bath-resistant” and, for that purpose you employ parchment.

Inge : Above all it was to "reinvent", rediscover the way of making, ancient recipes, for parchments. Besides, a few of the antique parchments we are talking about as purple parchments are truly some.

Emmanuel : But then out of which matter are made these ancient parchments?

Inge : They were real parchments, animal skin (goat lamb, ewe), but they were not always dyed or painted with purple, only coloured with false purple. It is a domain still little verified by modern analysis.

Until now, there were no instruments able to analyze them without removing a micro-piece. And that, nobody allowed it in libraries. I heard that there is now a device which with laser uses goniospectrocolorimetry, i.e. takes the object data and compares them with already confirmed data. I worked with Professor Mady Elias at the Louvre laboratory.

Emmanuel : But isn’t it possible to let the paper disintegrate into pulp and let it dry then on a  "deckle" ?

Inge : But for what to do ??? This is disproportional ! But maybe I am exaggerating. If someone wants to make a purple pulp to make paper, I let him/her go for it!

Emmanuel : All right, but materially speaking, is it, according to you, conceivable to imagine a similar process but with fermentation, had this been possibly done?

Inge : With a fermentation bath, which became cold again, .yes

But we must not forget a very important thing (at least for me!): the base material used to get the purple colour, are ANIMALS you must KILL !

Emmanuel : let us still talk about supports since it has to do with dyeing "something", this is the central question unlike for drawing or painting- well, according the usual categorial a priori.

We mentioned fabric, wood, paper, binding agents, but other porous materials exist. Is lime a candidate? Plaster, maybe? Why not cement or concrete : the last versions are finer and finer and could be employed maybe.

Did you do any test?

Inge : Tests with white powder supports, yes, to work up to the pigment !! [to the purpurissum]

Emmanuel : The use of concrete in parallel with purple can in my opinion be discussed seriously, because since a short while there has been « luxury concrete ». Same thing about white cements. All that has completely changed. Some artists even make paintings with concrete.

Inge : All right, but about the use of purple with (luxury) concrete, that does not make sense to me. It would be better to know if these materials put up with each other...

If one wants a violet colour in concrete or cement, it is quite possible to use a blend of red and blue from other origins. Don’t you agree ?

Emmanuel : This is not me who decides. I think that some new uses of natural (or not) purple are conceivable, nothing else. This substance has fascinated a lot of people. It was certainly born as a result of maybe among the most intense research efforts that took place during Antiquity, and its rediscovery during 19th century was not an easy task : this is not an easy technique. Anne is right to remind us that this kind of discovery implies more a veritable research than a blind chance.

Purple symbolized power, it brought wealth probably before or at the same time as it became its symbol, it disappeared during centuries, knew recently a revival, so we can imagine everything, especially with this symbolic associated to the Phoenix, the phoinikê, Greek name for purple.

Inge : I would like to come back to the experimentations we made during a  training course at Okhra.

I am not going to linger on what did not work – all the fats - for the use of the purple pigment.

This is the wax technique –cold-used– that renders to the maximum the true colour of purple. I am speaking of 'wax milk' used in distemper as a binding agent for this pigment.

You warm beeswax in distilled water (to avoid lime scale) or rainwater up till boiling. We add to it ammonium carbonate (during Antiquity, Pliny makes mention of sea water) dissolved in little water. The whole is put back to boiling. By mixing forcefully this blend up till cooling, you get this illustrious wax milk that can be kept for a very long time.

You must add 1/3 cellulose glue to 2/3 wax milk. Well mixed, this binding agent is ready-to-use to paint with the pigment of the purple: the purpurissum of the Antiquity.

The warm method, a kind of encaustic, is known and used during Antiquity. It consists of working while warming any employed material, the support, the colours, the tools to melt wax with the colours and on the support. There, wood is perfectly suitable for this method.

Without these relentless researches, would purple have had this value?

It is said that people were inspired by the experience of mosaic: small coloured wax cubes were patched together as for a mosaic. Then they melted by the methods of the time these cubes on or in the support where they blended as expected.

But, on the other hand, there is a text written in Italian (that I cannot read properly) by Selim Augusti, Sui colori degli antichi : il purpurissum, in 1961, in which he makes mention of purpurissum found in cubes in Pompeii’s excavation. Yet, up till now, the mural paintings did not bear witness of the application of this pigment! This is amazing, isn’t it?

Still more surprising is the result of the analysis done on this purple found in Pompeii. A short time ago, five researchers, scientists in different European laboratories worked separately on a mini sample of this famous cube (and this is where the problem lies: if they have had hundreds grams, it would have been more reliable !). Each analysis showed differences, and two results were saying "no, this is not purple", three pronounced positively. Or the opposite, I do not remember ! What is counting is the doubt.

Besides, the binder used with purpurissum in the mural paintings of Akrotiri/Thera on Santorini island, has not been identified for certain, yet.

There are of course other binders for working with purpurissum which are easy to use: Arabic gum, acrylic, clarea, i.e. egg-white, (not egg yolk).

The mystery of the purpurissum cubes

Jean-Pierre : Purpurissum can be added to melt beeswax (possibly as a mix with carnauba wax to make it harder). After cooling and by kneading the substance in 'stick' or in cube, one gets a fine purple 'pencil' with which it is possible to draw 'soft'.

During the training course that I ran recently at Okhra, we have been able to experiment, Inge and I, different binders with her famous purple pigment. That was really fascinating.

We had the possibility to verify that the binding agents that render at the best the purple colour are the wax-based binders, either wax milk or melt wax (allows making coloured sticks).

The tests with oil-based binders were disastrous, the result has been a darkening and a very strong impoverishment as it occurs with green earths or Ochres for example.

We must surely search for the reason of this in the direction of the refractive indexes (In this case, the nature of the charge upon which the purple is fixed interferes).

About wax milk, Pliny mentions a technique of preparation for wax with sea-water and sodium salt.

You must add glue to wax milk. We used cellulose glue, methylcellulose-based, but all kinds of glue in aqueous solution are usable: Arabic gum for instance, which was already known in the Antiquity.

About wax in sticks or in small cubes, we simply put together pigment and melt wax. It is possible to add resin to this blend (Chios mastic or dammar, the latter being unknown in the Antiquity) to get a harder binding agent, with two ways of proceeding:

- "dissolving" resin in a little turpentine then associating the whole to the wax. I put dissolving in quotes because it is a colloidal state. That allows getting a very thick paste in which this is the resin that holds the spirit. It is necessary to verify the right proportioning between resin and wax.

- Or melting wax and resin together. In this second case, the problem is related to the resin melting point which is higher that the wax melting point. If we associate beeswax and carnauba wax and if we settle for resin softening point there is maybe a compromise to be found which would help to make purple-coloured wax-resin sticks. This possibility is to be verified along with the ability of these resinous wax sticks to conserve the purple colour intact. Inge left me as a precious gift a little purple; therefore I will be able to do this verification.