Ancient Recipes Led Scientists to a Long-Lost Natural Blue
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Ancient recipes led scientists to a long-lost natural blue:
The pigment, called folium, graced the pages of medieval manuscripts. But it fell out of use, and the watercolor's identity has eluded scientists for decades. Now, after tracking down folium's source, researchers have mapped out the chemical structure for its blue-producing molecule.
Such chemical information can be key to art conservation. "We want to mimic these ancient colors to know how to " preserve them," says Maria Melo, a conservation scientist at Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Caparica, Portugal. But to unmask folium's identity, Melo and her team first had to find where it came from.
The researchers turned to medieval texts that described the source plant. With the help of a botanist, they discovered Chrozophora tinctoria, a tiny herb with silvery-green foliage. In a village in the south of Portugal, the team found the wild plant growing along the roadside and in fields after harvest. Back in the lab, researchers extracted the pigment from its pebble-sized fruits by following directions detailed in the medieval manuscripts. "It was really great fun to recover these recipes," Melo says.
Journal Reference:
P. Nabais et al. "A 1000-year-old mystery solved: Unlocking the molecular structure for the medieval blue from Chrozophora tinctoria, also known as folium". Science Advances. Published online April 17, 2020. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz7772.
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