This did not turn out how I imagined – every step was a revelation.
Several weeks ago, I bought a bouquet of freesia to brighten up the house. They were cheerful colors – red, fuchsia, and pink as well as the classic yellow. As the blossoms faded, I decided to see what color I might get from them, so I mascerated them in a cup with some alcohol for a few days They created a gorgeous golden color.
Since I have been experimenting with lake pigment-making, I decided to try to precipitate the alcohol extraction. I made a 2:1 solution with water and the color dye, then added alum in the usual “1 gram per 100 ml” recipe, followed by soda ash.
The liquid changed dramatically from golden to dark green! Adding the soda ash lightened the mixture. What a surprise. Working with botanical sources is like magic sometimes.
But this time, the spell didn’t work very well.
Twelve hours later, the solution had barely precipitated. The beaker was full of soft green fluff with a band of liquid at the top. The pH wasn’t neutral. So I did a few things to try to fix it:
- Heated it gently by floating it in a new dye bath I was simmering;
- Added more alum to the warmed beaker;
- Added a pinch of table salt to encourage better ionic bonding;
- Re-neutralised the solution with soda ash.
And in 24 hours, the precipitate as more dense and ready for filtering. It was also yellow again. How? Why? I have no idea. Magic. Organic chemistry in action.
I dried the precipitate for a couple of days and yesterday I scraped the crumbles off the filters into a bottle. The color is almost bronze.
Which is another surprise because the color that stained the paper was quite bright. You can see it on the two filters on the right in this photo:
So the next mystery will be what color the mulled paint turns out to be. Bright yellow? Dull gold? I can’t predict, but I will know before too long. Stay tuned.
(And if you are wondering what the other colors on the table – they are all biwa leaf. That’s turned into another fun exploration that I will write about once everything precipitates.)
BONUS COLOR: NOBIRU
I also recently processed some stems of wild onion (nobiru) that Iku-chan handed me while we were working in the paddies. I extracted a bright green color which dulled when turned into pigment. It made pretty pale green paper!
