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I always find it fascinating how color by itself used to truly be a status symbol, due to the rarity and challenge of making natural dyes.
by mjamesaustin 2y ago
I always find it fascinating how color by itself used to truly be a status symbol, due to the rarity and challenge of making natural dyes.
- jl6 2y agoA modern comparison might be a vantablack cloak.
- Gud 2y agoNobody will kill you for painting your car in vantablack without the kings permission.
- baq 2y agoNot the police and not vantablack, but don't try certain football team colors on certain other teams' stadiums
- yieldcrv 2y agowe should bring back sumptuary laws, can make it legal by prohibiting the sale of some materials to nonaccredited investors with the consequences of unlimited tax to the business circumvents freedom of expression by giving no consequences to the individual if they someone procure the material themselves but leverages the unlimited right to regulate commerce and unlimited right to tax
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jdietrich 2y agoThe proper Vantablack coatings are ITAR restricted materials that require an export license, so the comparison is really quite meaningful. You wouldn't be killed for using it without the King's permission, but you could serve time at His Majesty's pleasure for it. https://www.surreynanosystems.com/purchasing https://www.surreynanosystems.com/purchasing
- ipsum2 2y agoAlso it wouldn't stick to a cloak, it would most likely rub off.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y agoYou could always get the much cheaper and easier to buy Black 3.0 or 4.0 https://www.culturehustleusa.com/products/black-4-0 https://www.culturehustleusa.com/products/black-4-0
- advisedwang 2y agoI wonder if future people will compare trademark law to sumptuary laws. It being illegal to distribute fake Gucci might be seen like that.
- bookofjoe 2y agoOT: I named my calico cat Vanta because of the deep black stripes on top of her head. https://youtube.com/shorts/UzPPlEYX0NQ?si=m6EtgljZMb-iYM4e https://youtube.com/shorts/UzPPlEYX0NQ?si=m6EtgljZMb-iYM4e
- mrob 2y agoNatural dyes are common. The main three in medieval Europe were madder, weld, and woad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubia_tinctorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubia_tinctorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reseda_luteola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reseda_luteola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isatis_tinctoria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isatis_tinctoria These give red, yellow, and blue respectively, which are the primary colors of the traditional RYB subtractive color model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RYB_color_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RYB_color_model However, RYB is a poor match for human vision. The better subtractive primaries are cyan, magenta, and yellow. Mixing red and blue produces a dull, desaturated purple even when you're starting with saturated primaries, and the three main natural dyes are not particularly saturated. Tyrian purple was esteemed because it produced a visibly better purple than mixing woad and madder, which makes a purplish brown. Likewise, crimson from Kermes insects produces a visibly better red than madder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermes_(dye) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermes_(dye) Poor people would still have colored clothing, because all clothing was expensive hand-made clothing back then, so the marginal cost of dying with the common plant dyes was relatively small. But rich people could afford expensive dyes, and afford multiple applications of the cheap dyes. In some cases there were also sumptuary laws restricting use of expensive dyes. Rich people's clothing would have looked far more garish by our standards.
- yard2010 2y agoFunny to think that in 2000 years someone makes the same statement only about a purple Porsche vs a purple Dacia
- adrian_b 2y agoBesides visual attractiveness when fresh, the value of the dyes also depended a lot on their lightfastness and water resistance. Many of the dyes used in antiquity degraded quickly, so the clothes had to be dyed again periodically. Tyrian purple was valued not only because it was hard to obtain, but also because the clothes dyed with it kept their color for a very long time. The next most resistant dye was the blue from indigo or woad, then the red from beetles. The other colors faded quickly.
- philwelch 2y ago
- yard2010 2y agoWell, isn't it like a nice purple car or a cool looking NFT with extra (or less?) steps?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mdp2021 2y ago> [the] challenge of making natural dyes You could get legal cover for divorce if married to a worker in the production of purple, from the rotting murex, given the awful smell it gave... (Production is in general "costly", but not always with similar legal sides.) Remember that artistic pygments (so, for goods that also involved «status symbol») had traditionally been quite toxic - using arsenic, lead... That was the available technology, and it involved drawbacks and compromises. Edit: sorry, not just artistic: people poisoned themselves just to wear makeup. "Met Gala"s involved a drastic amount of sacrifice.
- AdmiralAsshat 2y agoAs the article mentions, you had to crush alot of snails to get that dye. The story goes that Roman senators would wear a purple stripe across their toga as a symbol of their status. Julius Caesar, not to be outdone, started wearing an all-purple toga. Which then became the mark of the emperor.
- corinroyal 2y agoDo not crush the snails. You poke them with a stick and they spit dye onto your skein. Then put them back.