Indigo: The Colour that Seduced the World

Indigo by Catherine E McKinley
will be published in August 2011

via delancyplace
“Until the most recent times, color dyes were rare and precious commodities upon which power and fortunes were built. Indigo, the brilliant blue dye made from plants, was one of America's slavery-based cash crops. But long before it was exported by America, indigo dye had been one of the world's great treasures for thousands of years. Referred to by some as blue gold, it caught the imagination of connoisseurs, and merchants and colonialists with its power to bewitch and its transcendent beauty — and the value and demand for indigo became ungovernable. It sparked bitter trade wars, and touched off impassioned European and North American legislation and political debate and became known as The Devil’s Dye.”
Read the rest here.

Tekhelet, Snails, and the Midnight Sky

via nytimes

“One of the mysteries that scholars have puzzled over for centuries is the exact shade of blue represented by ‘tekhelet,’ which the Bible mentions as the color of ceremonial robes donned by high priests and ritual prayer tassels worn by the common Israelite.

Though scientists and scholars are still debating the exact shade of the ritual blue, the dye used is modeled after a 2,000-year-old textile, above, and is produced from sea snails found in Israeli waters.

What was known about tekhelet (pronounced t-CHELL-et) was that the Talmud said it was produced from the secretion of the sea snail, which is still found on Israeli beaches. Traditional interpretations have characterized tekhelet as a pure blue, symbolic of the heavens so that Jews would remember God. Not so, according to an Israeli scholar who has a new analysis: tekhelet appears to have been closer to a bluish purple.

The scholar, Zvi C. Koren, a professor specializing in the analytical chemistry of ancient colorants, says he has identified the first known physical sample of tekhelet in a tiny, 2,000-year-old patch of dyed fabric recovered from Masada, King Herod’s Judean Desert fortress, later the site of a mass suicide by Jewish zealots after a long standoff against the Romans.

‘It really is majestic,’ Dr. Koren said of the shade, which he said remained close to its original hue and appeared to be indigo. . . ”

Read the rest here.

Paul Octavious’ S6 Minutes: Indigo

via swissmiss
A beautiful experimental short by Paul Octavious


S6 Minutes: Indigo from Paul Octavious on Vimeo.