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Crafts Of Color: Tupi Tapirage In Early Colonial Brazil, Amy Buono

Art Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"Tyrian purple. Lamp black. Lead white. Cadmium yellow. Ultramarine blue. The materiality of color, as it is often discussed, has a fixed quality. Pigments and dyes derived from many natural substances-minerals, earths, plants, and animals-have stable optic qualities. Lapis lazuli can be reliably counted upon to be blue. Dyes made from cochineal consistently fall within a certain range at the red end of the spectrum. Similarly, we might expect that the green feathers of a bird such as the Festive Parrot (Amazona festiva), after molting, would be replaced by equally green plumes. As the excerpt above suggests, from …