Technology and Crafts

Awesome is an over used word but not in this case, supercool...

I'll be damned, here's someone making something without CAD, CAM or CNC. 😲




I guess that's how they must have done things in the old days.

It's called “Luxury Item” and “Hand Made” and “Custom Built”.
There was a time when everything, that was nice, was that. Those were the times of elite consumption. We're talking Egyptian Pharaos, Persian Kings, Roman Ceasars, Chinese Emperors etc.

The Western Civilization changed all that, particularly in the last 200 years. Now you can buy nice things in stores. At least for the moment. 

Now we can all “live like Kings”. This is due to that we and our parents became “rich”, because we came to live in a highly prosperous society.
That prosperity comes from investments into ingenuinity, machines and mass production. Nothing else. 

... But if you would want to have something that is not mass produced, something that is unique and made to custom requirements/taste/wishes, the cost of that item is going to more fully reflect the value of he time and resources that actually goes into creating it. Materials, tools and education, available in the industrial mass production society, are still going to make it many magnitudes cheaper, than it would have been in other societies. But we're still seeing a bit of the “Item made for a King” here.
That's what it costs. What it really costs.

Now: Why would you buy something like this?
Well, if other needs compete for the money, you'd be an idiot to buy it, just as you say.
But otherwise, to each his own.

Here's a thing about money: If the cost of something doesn't really competes with something else, it sort of lacks relativity and then also relevance. So why not? It only hurts your heirs. And maybe you don't love your heirs beyond anything else. Maybe you'd rather spend the money yourself.

But no. I wouldn't pay $13000 for a turntable. I'd be interested in a plinth like that. It's solid cross-Birch throughout and looks very good. But, like you, I'm not interested in that arm and turntable. Turntable does matter, and I wouldn't have a nylon arm (though you have a point about the weight). It's just that I'm sure there must be “just as good” alternatives for much less money, even though turntables is not a mass market item anymore.

But this is where one particular feature of “Luxury Item” also come in: The brand and name. The customer probably wants those components because of what they are, rather than their performance. He wants to present their brands to his cocktail guests.
Now, I wouldn't, so I'm just guessing though.


Edited by MOD

I did some pieces on Blue pigments and dyes earlier in this thread. And I mentioned that throughout human history Blue has been the big problem, while it's the most solved color problem today.

Red is sort of the opposite. It has been the big problem in recent times, but has not been experienced as a problem historically. Why is that? It has to do with permanence of brilliant red coloring substances. Historically, they were either fine enough with the dullness or they weren't obsessed with the fugitiveness of the brilliant.
It has been perceived as a problem in modern times due to the difficulties in finding a permanent brilliant red.

The first reason why red hasn't been a historical big problem, is 'Red Ochre'.

Red Ochre has been the most important red pigment for 200,000 years and still is, even today.

It's used for outdoor paints, bricks, tiles, stucco, not only for reds, but also for tans, greys, browns, greens...
It's used for all kinds of serious art material and hi quality makeup.

Red Ochre is PERMANENT and also has preservative qualities, both for metals and wood. Which is why the Golden Gate bridge is painted with it and why wooden houses are often painted with it.

So what is Red Ochre?
It's an umbrella term for pigments which are colored by Iron Oxides, and most strongly by one particular Iron Oxide, Fe2O3, which happens to be red. (Edit: Regarding that, this particular iron oxide comes in two micro structural variants, one is more orange, one is more purple. The varying proportions of those in a pigment is one reason color can be so variated. Other reasons are traces of other iron oxides, like hydrated iron oxides - yellow -, or iron-manganese oxides - brown -. Still other factors are the things that make up the rest of the pigment, silicates, calcites...)
Light Red, Venetian Red, Indian Red, Burnt Sienna, Mars Red, Pozzoulo Red, Ercolano Red, Bole, Hematite, Purple Ochre, Caput Mortum, Transparent Oxide Red...
Natural Red Ochre is typically deposits of fine erosion products from Feldspar, which have been strongly colored by Fe2O3. But it can also be rutil, clay or even chalk. Most Red Ochres today are manufactured synthetically, because natural sites have been largely exhausted.
They come in hues from orange to purple, and may be very opaque or completely transparent. But the color is always dull.

I chose this video, because I think that this nerdy pottery enthusiast does a very good job of showing off and refining natural Red Ochre.



Oh, and Red Ochre is never "fugitive". What he means by that is that it comes off, smears off. What he needs is more clay in the ochre to act like a binder.

But Red Ochres are dull. They can be used for much, and they're completely permanent.
It's just that of course people also want bright, brilliant red color. And they had that. It was something we call Kermes today. It's an insect that lives on a special Oak tree that grows in the Mediterranean area. They collected them, crushed them and extracted a strong red dye. This was used to dye textiles. The dye could even be traded as patches of dyed cloth. They had processes for releasing the dye and bind it again on something else. The color was possible to manipulate by choice of metal salt used as mordant.

Red color obtained from Kermes was used in Europe as early as before 1000BC. While it was called many things over the years in many languages, it was also the origin of names like Carmoisine, Crimson and Scarlet. And Crimson Lake and Scarlet Lake for the pigments. (edit: "Crimson" was what what you got by using alum, "Scarlet" was what you got with a tin salt.)

However, after America was discovered, Kermes got stiff competition from a different insect, Cochineal, which lived on Cactus plants. It's not chemically the exact same dye, but the properties are very similar. Cochineal was easier to cultivate and the insects yielded much more dye than Kermes. Cochineal started to replace Kermes in Europe around 1540. During the 1700s use of Kermes became very marginal, and after 1850 it stopped being used.

Instead, they had Cochineal, which inherited the Scarlet (tin salts again) and Crimson (sodium carbonate this time) labels, and added a few new,  Carmine (alum) and Purple Lake (? ammonina compound? (Edit: calcium and magnesium salts were also used for color manipulation). (Note that Purple Lake was made from Cochineal, not snails, as is often assumed because of the fame of Tyrian Purple.)

Cochineal is still produced in quantity today. Not for dyeing textiles and not for paint. Instead it's used in high quality makeup, and as a food color, usually called Carmine E120.

If it's extracted correctly and completely pure (Edit: contamination with insect matter is potentially bad), it's actually the only brilliant red colorant that is completely safe to eat or smear around your eyes or on your lips. There are many others used as food colors, much cheaper, but they're all at least slightly suspect as carcinogenic or allergenic.

Anyway, these insect derived red dyes were not only used for clothes, but also laked to make pigments, which unfortunately were sometimes used by artists. “Unfortunately”, because they're not particularly lightfast or durable. Luckily, all artists did not rely on them for a more brilliant red (but that's another story).
Today, the names live on as names for the red colors, rather than identifying an insect colorant. But also for paints, Scarlet Lake, Crimson Lake, Purple Lake, Carmine, but representing other, modern durable organic pigments today. There is lately some convergence, towards some pigments, but the names does not indicate any particular pigment identities today.

There is of course no YouTube video featuring Kermes. But Cochineal can be shown.

A fourth historical red pigment is 'Minium'.
In modern times it's perhaps more known as Red Lead.
It's a version of Lead Oxide. Depending upon when you read chemistry, it's Lead(II,IV)Oxide, or 2PbO.PbO2, or Pb3O4.

It's found in nature in very small quantities where you mine other Lead minerals. That's probably where Egyptians found it. Curiously, the Egyptians knew how toxic it was, much in the same way that the Romans knew that Cinnabar was toxic, while neither knowledge was particularly well inherited by later ages.

It was later found to be easy to synthetize by roasting White Lead at temperatures less than 500 deg C. Which made it the cheapest brilliant red pigment.

It's a rather orange hue of red, and is not particularly permanent as a pigment.
Its toxicity is extremely nasty, and it has destroyed countless lives through the ages (It attacks the mental powers, making the victim slow and stupid, and the effect is permanent). It was unfortunately last used in common primers for metals (Edit: Not outlawed in USA until 1978, much later than the rest of the world. Those primers mostly consisted of Red Ochre, doing the real job, just like today. The Red Lead only made them redder, and as long as the binder was linseed oil, made the paint film more elastic - the real purpose, inhibiting flaking -, often making it necessary to sand off, poisoning even more people.)  I think it's banned for all purposes today, pretty much all over the world now. Unfortunately, it has been used for painting wood and metal toys red. It was also the red paint which would be used for painting various decorative parts of buildings, including religious, red, used that way in China and Japan since before 100BC. And if a British sea captain wanted to paint parts of his ship red, like sculptures or the inside of the gun ports, Minium would be the paint. (Edit: It was simply the common red paint. Like Vermillion/Cinnabar, the hue depended on the pigment size. The more milled it was, the more orange.) 

It has been used by painting artists, but not much as an artist pigment in Europe, probably because it was known at an early date that it wasn't permanent.
But it was used for red text in old books and manuscripts, as well as a red color for the illumination of capital letters. And in that use, in old manuscripts, protected from light and atmosphere, it has survived pretty well.

It also featured in various pigment scams. Red Ochre was cheaper than Minium, and sometimes traded Minium was extended with Red Ochre. Similarly, it was cheaper than Cinnabar/Vermilion, so of course some Cinnabar was extended with Minium.

So Madder.
A rather big subject, because it's so historically important and because it is so many things, some of which are not even Madder any longer.

Let's see if I can create some structure to this by starting at the beginning.
Madder is a family of plants all over most of the world, that create extractable, cold red dyes, particularly in its roots. Madder has been used to dye textiles and leathers since ancient times, 1500BC. Making pigments and thus paints from madder is a much more recent process though, from 1805. There is however, apparently some evidence suggesting that the Greeks and Romans may have applied the dye as a wash, on pottery and wood.

This is my longest video I've selected. A hobbyist is attempting (and succeeding) to make Madder pigment. It's half an hour long and you'd probably want to leave it for later.




Just as the insect dyes, Kermes and Cochineal, the color of Madder will vary from an orange hue to a purplish hue, depending upon the process and the presence of different metal ions. Overall, except for the rose color (more later) these Madder reds are however more dull than the insect dyes can be, and that goes particularly for the warmer hues like scarlet and orange, which are rather brown than red. In fact, the 'red' variant of Madder goes under the name “Brown Madder”. As the hue shifts to colder, crimson and purple, the red hue is stronger.

They were however cheaper than Kermes, and - this being the big point of Madder - much more durable and lightfast. 'Rose Madder' is the most lightfast natural, organic color stuff known. And Crimson Madder or Madder Lake is the second most lightfast natural organic colorant.

When extracting dyes or dying with Madder, it's crucial to avoid iron ions. Only utensils made of wood (nail-less), plastic, glass or glazed ceramics can be used. And the water should be rain water collected by iron-free means. Iron contamination makes Madder become a gray dirt-brown.

Besides the effect of metals on the color, there's also another side to color variation. Madder contain several red anthraquinone colorants. The most important is Alizarin, then Purpurine, then Pseudo-Purpurine, then Morindone, Xanthopurpurine and Rubiadin.
The result of all this is that there are a lot of different outcomes possible, when lake-ing or dying with Madder.

'Rose Madder Genuine' is mainly Pseudo-Purpurine, which is selectively extracted during the process.
Madder Lake, Crimson Madder, Brown Madder, Purple Madder, are mainly Alizarin.

The fact that Rose Madder was Pseudo-Purpurine is a fairly recent discovery.




When the chemistry of Madder was first investigated, they found that it was mostly Alizarin and then some Purpurine. As Purpurine is rather fugitive, they correctly concluded that Alizarin was the important part.

Next thing to happen was that a synthetic process to make Alizarin was invented in 1868, and a practical method to produce the dye was invented a few years later.

Synthetic Alizarin is extremely strong, very transparent, and fairly cheap. It quickly became a favorite red dye and pigment. Until just a decade ago, or two, you could see it everywhere. The characteristic, slightly dull, deep cold red or crimson is easy recognize. Clothes, wool, book covers, toys, wall papers, packaging, everywhere.
And the natural Madder industry collapsed of course.

Madder Lakes were already popular paints with European artists. With good reasons. There really weren't any alternatives for a deep, cold red, and its reputation for durability was pretty good. Alizarin reinforced this. As late as the 1970s, there were still no alternative pigments commercially available. 'Alizarin Crimson' had become a mainstay on the painter's palette.




...And a disaster for the permanence of fine art.

To be fair, this wasn't so much due to Alizarin's shortcomings as the habits of painters.
The general belief was this: Natural Madder Lake was known to be a mix of Alizarin and Purpurine. Was known to be fairly lightfast, magnitudes better than the insect lakes. Purpurine was known to be less lightfast than Alizarin, so using pure Alizarin was bound to be more permanent than the natural Madder Lake, right?
(this was a correct assumption, though it later came to be believed to be false).
And then Alizarin was tested according to the Blue Wool Scale, and performed very well, reinforcing the confidence.

The problem here was that the Blue Wool scale test was done on close to full strength color. Alizarin is fairly durable when used strongly, as a strong red. Like many other organic dyes, it protects itself by also acting as a filter against the harmful light. Painters though, weren't using Alizarin Crimson that way. They would use it as their universal tinter, very lightly, weakly, to add a rose cast, or as a minus-green, to modify browns, grays, greens, blues.

The result was that the paintings faded and acquired a green cast as they aged. The proper paint to use for such purposes is a Red Ochre, like Burnt Sienna for example, which will never fade, regardless how weakly you use it.

But all those old paintings which seemed to suggest Madder was durable enough? Then some people did some more conclusive, and comparative lightfastness tests on Alizarin Crimson and natural Rose Madder. And found out that Rose Madder was significantly more lightfast. The false conclusion from this was that due to some 'natural' magic, natural Alizarin was more durable than synthetic. The truth was different. Rose Madder was Pseudo-Purpurine, not Alizarin + Purpurine as assumed.

But some of the old paintings had also been interpreted wrongly. While presence of Madder could be detected with some radiation analysis in old paintings, the still visible red color came from Cinnabar/Vermilion underneath, not the Madder Lake. The artist had glazed Madder on top of a Vermilion, but all the red contribution from the Madder layer was completely faded, gone. What red remained, was the Vermilion.

So except for use as a very dark, deep, strong red, Alizarin is not good enough for art intended to be hanged for display.

Enter modern replacements. The demand from car manufacturers for durable pigments had made production of some esoteric, recently invented pigments commercially viable enough. The Quinacridone and Perylene pigments. These families of pigments are used to make a number of paints which are still named something with “Alizarin” or “Madder”, though they have no relation. These are magnitudes more durable than Alizarin, but they are not as strong or as transparent and deep as genuine Alizarin.



The most expensive and serious ranges of art material, have both old, genuine Alizarin and modern Quinacridone/Perylene replacements on offer. And in the case of W&N, even still genuine Rose Madder. A pigment that is otherwise unobtainable today, so this is W&N's own production.

Cheaper art material often offer some Azo pigments, or mixture of Alizarin and Azo pigments as “Madder” and “Alizarin” colors. Azo red pigments started to be invented before WWI and then they rolled on in the 1920s until today. They are the most common red colorants today. There are many different Azo pigments. Most of them are cheap. Permanence is mostly around the same as Alizarin, or worse, or slightly better, but the purity and brilliance of Azo pigments' red color is unmatched. And compared to the first synthetic red pigments like the Rhodamins and the Eosins, they have much better permanence.

While Madder/Alizarin is in strong decline today, it has been a really big deal of red color in our history, all the way until rather recently.

In late years, a few Azo pigments have been invented that have seriously good lightfastness. The really lightfast reds today are however Cadmium reds and Pyrrole reds. But that's another story and they're not cheap.

This is a well made video. It's quite fun to watch how he does it.

So I've written a series of posts here, on the subject of Blue and Red colors through history. Particularly how it also relates to art, with both ancient Egyptian and medieval to modern European art placing strong emphasis on permanence. You don't quite see that as strongly in other cultures. I'm not sure why, but even today many color products, including art material, from high tech countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan are often kinda crappy. They primarily seem to care about how pure and strong the colors are. And Roman ascendency killed off some of what the Egyptians had learned about colors.

Anyway, I'm going to continue that series. First with two posts about blues that I might have mentioned in passing.

First Azurite / Verditer. This is a blue Copper mineral that occurs in nature. In Roman times it was actually more expensive than Lazurite aka Lapis Lazuli, the blue gemstone. The reason for that was probably that in a more unrefined state, Azurite is a much purer and brighter blue than Lazurite, which only yields a rather grey pigment. The secret art of extracting Ultramarine from Lazurite wasn't discovered until around 1400. Before that, Lazurite was mostly used directly for mosaics, with the blue color of the gemstone retained. And the Romans don't seem to have appreciated the property of permanence.

As some other pigments (Cinnobar/Vermilion, Orpiment/King's Yellow....) occurring in nature but easy to synthetize, it has two names Azurite (natural) and Verditer (synthetic). Doesn't matter, it's the same thing.

Here's a Video depicting how Azurite is refined and washed, to produce art pigments for collectors and nerds.




Despite it's wide use in medieval times for blue paint, Azurite is not a good art pigment. It's not durable. It will go dark and more green, under the influence of light and air. You can actually see this in this guy's samples at the end. Some of those cards are older, you can see it in the tone of the paper as well, and the blue color has already turned dark bluegreen.

The way this was handled by medieval artists, was that they used oil and resin as a binder, which protects the pigment somewhat from the atmosphere, and they used it under a thin top layer of the ridiculously expensive Ultramarine. The Azurite gives mass, particularly to deep blues, and the Ultramarine on top retains a blue shade itself while simultaneously also protect the Azurite from light by shadowing it.

P.S. I plan to complete this post with some pictures later.

This video provides some perspective, but only on color.