Sean Silver

Indigo is a hot topic right now, hot in the dyeing community, and hot among scholars who work on dyes.  I was recently at a conference on colors where half … Read More

When we think of paper, especially historical paper, we tend to think of white paper.  We think of the fine white paper used for books, or for letters or manuscript … Read More

Many organic dyes, what the eighteenth-century colour-makers called “vegetable” colors, are sensitive to the alkalinity or acidity of the dyebath.  I have elsewhere shared the range of bright reds and … Read More

I’ve been targeting a first-edition copy of Tristram Shandy just about since this project began.  I’m not a bibliophile.  This isn’t about author-love or the commoditization of old things.  I … Read More

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been writing up grant and fellowship proposals– or, maybe I should say “not writing them up,” since I’ve been finding ways to be productive … Read More

(Continued from Prussian Green and The Wind Furnace) Modern Prussian Blue is light-fast, chemically inert, and chromatically rich, so much so that it is still on modern painters’ palettes, for … Read More

Among Sir Isaac Newton’s papers are descriptions of a surprising number of furnaces.  Newton is best-known for the laws of physics which still bear his name; his three laws comprise … Read More

My reading these days includes a lot of Robert Boyle’s two essays on failure: “Of the Unsuccessfulness of Experiments,” and “Of Unsucceeding Experiments.”  They are similar in title, but not … Read More

I’ve taken a break from making more pigments to transform some of those pigments into watercolors—tiny, almost gemlike nuggets ready to be mixed with water and applied to paper.  I … Read More

I’ve started working on a category of pigments called “lakes,” a name for insoluble pigments made from organic dyes.  Virtually everything in nature gives some sort of color; it’s just … Read More