SC - Medieval Bug Catcher

[LrdRas@aol.com]

Several folks have commented on my earlier 
post (Egg Tempera OT) concerning gems.  I 
will reply here to several questions raised.
 
The Cleopatra story to my understanding was that
she shattered the pearl and dissolved it in vinegar
which I believe was drunk as a Roman custom 
particularly in the Legions.

As to using second grade material, that is self
defeating as you need to use first quality rough
to get the pure colour intensities that you would 
want to grind up gems for in the first place place.  
You really don't want to adulterate the pigment 
with the impurities rife in second quality material.  
As to using "precious" stones (mostly crystaline), you 
certainly don't want to do that either, as the colours
of ruby, emerald, sapphire are lost to a white or
pale dust when powdered and are USELESS as
pigments.  You can make excellent (though costly)
sandpaper with these powders however.  

ABSOLUTLY FORGET any thought of culinary uses
of most of these materials.  Powdered diamond and
corundum (Ruby or sapphire) were considered potent
poisons in period times.  They actually are chemically
inert and nonpoisonous but if you ingest them as a powder,
they will shred your intestinal linings (like ground glass) and
you will quite possibly die from hemoraging. Malachite and
lapis are poisonous due to cuprates and other nasty metal
compounds.  The arsonates and lead minerals you don't 
even want to consider grinding for pigment without a fume 
hood.  Mercury compounds.  Forget it!  The EPA would haul
your tush to the pen quite rapidly, if you you didn't kill yourself
fooling with it in the first place.

As to what I call "reasonable costs", I mean reasonable
cost for good quality gem material.  I don't mean cheap,
because I buy this by the GRAM or CARAT.  This is a great 
deal less expensive than buying retail finished gems.  For 
instance,I sell a very clear grade of amber (Columbian) for 
$.25 per gram which can be used for incense or medicinal
(or culinary for that matter) purposes.  I do not stock most
of the other "semiprecious" stones except maybe some good
malachite.  If anyone wants some of these pigment minerals,
I will have to check them out in my next wholesale show in 
late July.  Incidentally, cultured and freshwater commercial
pearls are not usable to dissolve (in whatever liquid you select)
as they have cores of shell unlike a fully natural sea or 
freshwater pearl.  Even fairly poor naturals are fairly pricey 
at the wholesale level.

I hope this clarifies some aspects of using minerals and
rare earths either for pigment or for culinary uses.  I am 
sure that any further discussion will be most interesting
as there are many, many erroneous period ideas about
gems and their properties (their sources, composition, 
poison or curative properties).  The list of them is huge.
I will endeavor to answer what I can about them, but let's
try to keep onlist discussions to culinary or medical uses 
from ingestion for the main.

Akim Yaroslavich
"No glory comes without pain"