[Sca-cooks] Indigo

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Stefan, indigo is an Old World plant. It's origin appears to be South 
Asia. It was very commonly used within the SCA time frame in many 
parts of Asia - bearing in mind that the Middle East is basically 
Southwest Asia - and in North Africa, and thence to Spain.

Indigo was a trade item into Europe, but was considered expensive, 
partly because of protectionist practices in some places (protecting 
their woad production). Indigo was desirable in large part because a 
little bit of indigo dyes considerably more cloth than the same 
amount of woad.

It was sometimes used to make paint for manuscripts - by the Spanish, 
for example, in their wonderful spacy art - i'm forgetting the time 
period - but all the people have huge saucer eyes and the artists 
used only about 5 colors of paint - vermilion, crimson lake 
(alizarin) (a cool red, whereas vermilion is a warm red), indigo, a 
bright yellow (i'm not sure of the source - there are a couple 
possibilities, all toxic), white, and black.

Anahita
a persona proudly wearing indigo dyed clothing