To make Maya blue, May places ch’oj leaves in alkaline water – using lime or ash – for 24 hours in a concrete vat at his home. Then the mixture is strained and palygorskite clay, collected from nearby caves, is positioned at the bottom of the vat to absorb the tint. After the resulting blue clay is baked in an oven at about 250 degrees Celsius (480F), it is then ground into a fine powder and inserted inside a small flask, ready to sell.
The chemistry of Maya blue is fascinating since Indigo degrades quickly. To keep the color
vibrant, now over centuries, it was encased in palygorskite clay. If you are interested in this topic, see also:
Veiled Brightness: A History of Ancient Maya Color
with Stephen Houston and colleagues, University of Texas Press, 2009
Hands are typically an excellent gray reference for photography, ensuring that the captured photos represent the color accurately given the photographer’s platform constraints. Hands also help the human brain correct for variations in lighting, color profiles, monitor calibration, and so on. Showing the dye color on skin ensures the highest fidelity conveyance of the hue to the reader possible without control over how it’s viewed. Other examples of the pigment’s use would be abstract and “just another blue”; by showing in this way, it’s possible to see that it’s an uncommon and high-key blue.
It’s also extremely unusual to see a skin-safe saturated dye in this shade; most powdered sources of blue and white, which would necessarily be blended to reach these shade, would be highly toxic. So, for pigment historians and aficionados, these photographs are eerie and compelling. This is what working with pigment used to be like, before we understood how much of it was toxic and deadly to the people working with and wearing it. You could just dip your hands in the forbidden color and admire them. It’s very cool to see and I’m glad they used hands as the focus.
(There may also be cultural reasons why the dye is shown here on skin; I haven’t yet studied mesoamerican cultures and body painting, but others who are more familiar should chime in.)
To add to this: the RGB colorspace reproducible by modern displays is limited compared to the full colorspace that humans can see so when photographing pigments, photographers need a proper reference for color correction. Wikipedia says the CIELCh of Maya blue is (76, 66, 238°) which is at the edge of the RGB colorspace. Depending on purity and composition, the real pigment might be just outside the range, so for a viewer to get a realistic portrayal they need that contrast too.
Mesoamerican cultures did use a lot of body paint for special occasions like warriors going into battle and religious ceremonies. This Maya blue would likely have been used by priests and other high status individuals in religious ceremonies, rather than the general population though.
Thank you for sharing this--I was also confused by the hand photos but viewing them again with this reference point gave me a new appreciation for the entire work!
Interesting that some ancient cultures in different parts of the world made blue part of their rituals and also lost the ability to produce the dyes. Egyptians, Jews (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekhelet). Is it because blue->sky->God?
Blue pigments were just rare. There are very few natural ones and historically the synthetics have been costly and hard to produce, Han blue, Egyptian blue, Fra Angelico blue from lapiz... The later was so expensive it was mainly reserved for Mary's robes, so perhaps the spiritual association was due to expense. Fra Angelico blue is still expensive. 23,000 Euros a kilo from Kremer. Even new synthetic blues are expensive. YInMn blue is 208 Euro for 50g.
The real revolution in color was the invention of cheap synthetic blues starting with Prussian blue in the 19th century and led today by the ultramarines and phthalocyanine blues, which include our standard cyan used in every inkjet. When Prussian blue came out there were a few decades of artistic celebration at the dawn of a cheap, intense, and gorgeous blue. Hokusai's 36 Views of Mount Fuji is a particularly exuberant example of this new blue's early use.
Moreover, due to the scarcity of blue pigments or dyes in plants and animals (except indigo, which is found in many plants and also in some animals, e.g. in some snails), the vivid blue details that can be seen on many birds, insects or lizards, and also on the genitals or faces of a few monkeys, are not caused by pigments or dyes, but by optical interference or diffusion in thin transparent layers.
Many fruits and flowers contain blue organic compounds (anthocyanins), but those are useless for making dyes or pigments, because they are unstable and they loose their color very quickly.
I'm always amazed how we think a plant or animal has gone extinct, only to find it decades or centuries later. Life finds a way, and we're terrible at seeing it!
Since I started painting miniatures most of my time has been spent trying to recreate colors that I first mixed on a palette before scribbling down the recipe on a notecard.
It’s maddening. I ended up needing to buy a scientific scale and vortex mixer just to match my custom bone color, “Skel-u-Tan”. I mix it a bottle at a time now so I don’t have to think about too often. Don’t even get me started on Turquoise blends.
Skel-u-Tan Recipe: Mix Vampire Fang (Two Thin Coats), Dragon Fang (Two Thin Coats), and White (AK Intense) at a 1:1:8 ratio.
