The Man Preserving Endangered Colors (bbc.com) 55
For Zapotec artist and weaver Porfirio Gutierrez, colour is a way to connect with his ancestors' way of life, which has sustained civilisations by living in symbiosis with nature. BBC: Back home in the village of Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico, Porfirio Gutierrez is referred to by his indigenous community as "El Maestro." In Ventura, California, where he lives now, and to the contemporary art world that he is courting, he is an artist with a mission. But for Gutierrez, the job is the same: to conserve, preserve and innovate, when necessary, generations' worth of wisdom and culture associated with the making of one thing that keeps everything interesting -- colour. But not just any colour. These colours are derived from nature, meaning that Gutierrez's charge is to discover new and old ways of plucking plants and insects straight out of the natural world and transform them into the pigments that give forth the glorious, rich, fullness of natural dyes.
Bins of these dried plants and insects in Gutierrez's Ventura studio are all colours in waiting. The most unusual of them all is a shimmering silver bead-like insect called cochineal that will spend its next life as a luxurious red dye. These bugs are cultivated year after year in the same way that seeds are saved by farmers, passing environmental wisdom from generation to generation. Gutierrez cultivates his own cochineal on an impressive wall of prickly pear cactus leaves installed in his studio. The insects grow like parasites on the the leaves, consuming the cactus juice which produces carminic acid in their body cavities. When dried and ground they miraculously transform into a velvety powder and the base for a red colour.
When compared with the synthetic dyes that are used today in essentially all our clothes and textiles, nature's version is almost always inexplicably better. It's the visual equivalent of a peach ripened by the tree, or a tomato baked in sunshine. Some lost part of you recognises that this is how it's supposed to be. Natural dyes are no different. Across time and cultures, we've been carpeting cave floors and dipping our jeans in dye, not because they won't otherwise function but because colour makes life's banal objects durable and our memories last longer. And if you are as blessed with knowledge as Gutierrez is, then that colour also grounds you spiritually and connects you to your ancestors' way of life -- a way of life that sustained civilisations by living in symbiosis with nature. A way of life that 500 years of colonisation has systematically erased.
Bins of these dried plants and insects in Gutierrez's Ventura studio are all colours in waiting. The most unusual of them all is a shimmering silver bead-like insect called cochineal that will spend its next life as a luxurious red dye. These bugs are cultivated year after year in the same way that seeds are saved by farmers, passing environmental wisdom from generation to generation. Gutierrez cultivates his own cochineal on an impressive wall of prickly pear cactus leaves installed in his studio. The insects grow like parasites on the the leaves, consuming the cactus juice which produces carminic acid in their body cavities. When dried and ground they miraculously transform into a velvety powder and the base for a red colour.
When compared with the synthetic dyes that are used today in essentially all our clothes and textiles, nature's version is almost always inexplicably better. It's the visual equivalent of a peach ripened by the tree, or a tomato baked in sunshine. Some lost part of you recognises that this is how it's supposed to be. Natural dyes are no different. Across time and cultures, we've been carpeting cave floors and dipping our jeans in dye, not because they won't otherwise function but because colour makes life's banal objects durable and our memories last longer. And if you are as blessed with knowledge as Gutierrez is, then that colour also grounds you spiritually and connects you to your ancestors' way of life -- a way of life that sustained civilisations by living in symbiosis with nature. A way of life that 500 years of colonisation has systematically erased.
Not just natural colors (Score:3)
I've heard about SCA artists working to save medieval pigment recipes from getting lost. An issue is some of the historical pigments are toxic.
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When I first read the headline, I thought they might be talking about pottery glazes. You can get some very impressive colors with some under-fired toxic metals, including uranium ores. They're very beautiful. The resulting pottery is just dangerous to eat or drink out of is the problem.
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You do learn from sci-fi to never touch glowing orbs. Con the red-shirts into testing.
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Yes but video games teach you the opposite.
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My avatar is always a red-shirt.
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These ores don't glow, they just make really pretty colors.
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After a few sips from the goblet, hard to tell the diff
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some of the historical pigments are toxic
Just like a good part of today's "artists".
It's kind of funny. (Score:2)
Urgently Needed (Score:4, Funny)
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There's truth to it (Score:2)
When compared with the synthetic dyes that are used today in essentially all our clothes and textiles, nature's version is almost always inexplicably better. It's the visual equivalent of a peach ripened by the tree, or a tomato baked in sunshine. Some lost part of you recognises that this is how it's supposed to be.
I'm not sure about the evolutionary or mystical aspect implied here, but it's true that something is lost when you use synthetic pigments instead of natural ones. In watercolor, for instance, the variety of natural pigments leads to all sorts of secondary attributes to the paint, like whether the pigment is absorbed into the paper, how it blends with other paints, how transparent it is, etc. Painters often spend a life time finding exactly the palettes that work for them, and it's not merely the hue of each
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On the other hand, many of those secondary attributes don't last since they're part of reactions that have not actually stopped. You might get an ideal look right after it's completed, but what will it look like in 30 years? Consider all the paintings that used Cinnabar that eventually turned black. So natural pigments are fine as long as you understand the limitations. Also, never wash any naturally pigmented clothes with anything you don't want to be the same color.
Cochineal... (Score:3)
"The most unusual of them all is a shimmering silver bead-like insect called cochineal that will spend its next life as a luxurious red dye." /sarcasm
Yes, very unusual... so unusual that hundreds of tons of dye are being produced every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"The most unusual of them all is a shimmering silver bead-like insect called cochineal that will spend its next life as a luxurious red dye."
The most unusual of them all is a shimmering silver bead-like insect called CowboyNeal that will spend its next life as a luxurious red dye.
So that's why he's not posting any more.
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"The most unusual of them all is a shimmering silver bead-like insect called cochineal that will spend its next life as a luxurious red dye."
The most unusual of them all is a shimmering silver bead-like insect called CowboyNeal that will spend its next life as a luxurious red dye.
So that's why he's not posting any more.
You win the internet today, good sir! 8^)
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Quick, call the NSPCI!
File under subjective romanticized bs. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Obviously philistines won't care, but there is still a lot that can't be digitally recorded when it comes to colour.
RGB is only part of it, the way the pigment interacts with light and the environment can't be adequately reproduced yet.
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Re: File under subjective romanticized bs. (Score:3)
Probably not a good place to mention that natural dyes only very rarely have any shades of blue, and because of this, they're not that colorful. If one pays attention to very old paintings and pottery, you'll notice that the colors are mostly green, red, brown, and yellow. It wasn't until synthetic dyes and pigments became a thing that blue really begins to show up in artwork.
https://artuk.org/discover/sto... [artuk.org]
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Agreed. "A way of life that 500 years of colonisation has systematically erased." ... waiting for someone to burst out with Kumbaya.
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The proper term is Mexicans (Score:2)
Not Teotitties
Natural dyes, like tea (Score:4, Interesting)
My wife had a very white wool sweater-coat that had yellowed over the years. She was considering getting rid of it (donating it) and I asked her if I could try something. I dyed the coat using Lipton tea -- starting by soaking the coat and several family-sized tea bags in cold water (in a BIG canning pot), brought it up to a simmer, let it stand for a while, then let it cool down (rapid temperature changes are what shrink wool) and rinsed it out in the bathtub -- and the coat was a beautiful, medium brown tea color. She loved it and kept for years more, until she died in 2006.
According to various sources, tea is rich in tannins which bonds well with natural fibers, which means that it doesn’t require a mordant (a substance used to bind the dye to the fabric).
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tea is rich in tannins which bonds well with natural fibers, which means that it doesnâ(TM)t require a mordant
Tannic acid is a mordant.
*eyeroll*
Why is this on Slashdot? (Score:2)
What's the tech, computer, semiconductor, nerd, math, space exploration, etc. connection to Slashdot?
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Chemistry and biology
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Pantone cares about this sort of (Score:2)
Slashdot colors (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot colors (Score:4, Insightful)
I just wish Slashdot would add some color to this fucking hideous green I've been looking at for decades.
OMGPONIES!
500 years of colonisation? (Score:2)
As a color blind man I am severely triggered (Score:3)
color is evil and those who promote it are also evil
also fuck you yelling filter
Agenda-driven drivel (Score:5, Interesting)
When compared with the synthetic dyes that are used today in essentially all our clothes and textiles, nature's version is almost always inexplicably better.
More bloviating here...
A way of life that 500 years of colonisation has systematically erased.
Oh bullshit. Colonization didn't erase natural dyes. Synthetics are qualitatively better. Not just better color (and yes, they ARE better color, maudlin meanderings of dribbling romanticists to the contrary), but most importantly color fastness in the face of repeated machine washings with commercial detergents. Synthetic dyes are being created systematically by chemists working from the best understanding of physical reality mankind has ever had. The results are better. That's why people use them.
Stupid assholes like this author are the kind who claim that math and physics are racist or sexist. Not the people in those fields, but the actual study itself. Post-modernism is a disease that generates more wrong conclusions per minute than anything since religion. It's time to start shouting these people down. They're polluting minds and actively damaging society.
There's nothing wrong with preserving knowledge of natural dyes. El Maestro should keep doing what he's doing. But trying to pretend that what he's doing is anything other than preserving a historical curiosity is obnoxious and detracts from the real value of his work.
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True that. I honestly believe that native weavers and rug makers thought they'd died and gone to heaven when they could finally get their hands on cheap, readily available artificial dyes ... especially in colors that simply did NOT exist in nature (well, in any form that could be produced by natural dyes).
Mystical Nonsense (Score:3)
from the summary:
"When compared with the synthetic dyes that are used today in essentially all our clothes and textiles, nature's version is almost always inexplicably better. It's the visual equivalent of a peach ripened by the tree, or a tomato baked in sunshine. Some lost part of you recognises that this is how it's supposed to be. Natural dyes are no different."
A good hypothesis would be that, if you asked subjects to rate colors according to "naturalness", the entire effect reduces to color saturation. That's because natural pigments, having smooth reflectance functions, exclude very saturated colors.
Another hypothesis would be that colors rated as "natural" are the colors of objects which are natural, perhaps weighted by their prevalence within the visual environment as measured by mean area in the visual field, object count, or behavioral relevance. Algorithmically, something like, recall all the natural object's you've seen, their colors, and check if the color with which you are presented is in that set. Ya, that's biologically infeasible, so whatever the neuronal equivalent would be.
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There's often some fluorescence in natural dyes, and also a whole spectrum of colors that cannot be reproduced by normal paints, similarly to how a sunset cannot be represented accurately on an RGB monitor.
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What "whole spectrum of colors"? We are literally talking about colors here, by definition at least SOME of the "whole spectrum" is covered by "normal paints". Also, some normal paints have fluorescence, so get specific on what colors natural dyes can reproduce that "normal paints" cannot. You will NOT be able to do so, of course, because your entire post is bullshit.
Also, an "RGB monitor" is a tristimulus-based device, it can represent almost none of the visible spectrum "accurately", so the fact that i
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The question is whether it can reproduce an equivalent that looks the same to the eye and, in that respect, it can. At least as well as the camera that captured the image of the sunset, which itself is a tristimulus-based device which also fails to accurately represent the sunset.
This is all false. Furthermore, you are a moron. Finally you know so little about color I suspect you are blind.
Go outside and look at a petunia. If you're ambitious, try to reproduce its colors with paint. You can't do it.
At a minimum, take a picture of a sunset, then compare it on your phone with the actual thing. Unless you are literally blind (which I suspect), you will be able to see a difference.
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It's also the case that there are three color receptors in the human eye, so the RGB limitation of color monitors is matched to some extent by the three peak color sensitivities of the eye. And you guess it: those three sensitivities peak at Red, Green and Blue.
One thing I believe a color monitor cannot reproduce, however, is the brightness range of many natural scenes under full solar lighting, which the eye responds to by almost instantaneous closing or opening of the pupil, depending on where we're look
Oh Gawd! (Score:2)
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Not to mention, today we have a bunch of new pigments in addition to the old pigments. Artists didn't stop using them unless they like something else better.
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Not to mention, today we have a bunch of new pigments in addition to the old pigments. Artists didn't stop using them unless they like something else better.
Yes - It's actually great to add to the repertoire. Imagine how many people poisoned themselves with cinnabar.
A/B tested? (Score:3)
"nature's version is almost always inexplicably better."
Has that theory been properly A/B tested under lab conditions? Or is this just romantic poetry masquerading as scientific color theory? Citation definitely needed.
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I suspect it's not just the case that the cause of this alleged difference is inexplicable, it's also inexplicable why certain people think the difference exists. Sort of like the contention of wine testers that the best French wines were superior to all California wines--until a blind taste test was conducted (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_(wine)).
Don't use dyes with CHEMICALS!!l (Score:2)
You need to be using organic free trade artisanal locally sourced small batch pigments. These and only these provide the proper micro AND macro pigmentation that truly displays the soul of a color and promote healthy feng shui.
Over dependence on mass produced pigments are spreading toxic diseases as they expose us to chemicals!
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You're joking, I'm sure. But Poe's Law applies.
Cochineal (Score:2)
“ The most unusual of them all is a shimmering silver bead-like insect called cochineal”
Actually cochineal looks like dull gray lint covering opuntia pads (prickly pear) until you wash it off, when it drips the brilliant red blood that was ancestrally hued as a dye.
You mean 500 of development and discovery? (Score:2)