Up Your Hue IQ: Blue Traditional Cache

This area is a very busy part of the city, home to two schools, three churches and a government building all within close range. This increases the difficulty rating. All the roads around here are painted by Mawaqif but not all require a parking ticket. The school parking lot is not paid parking but the road to the government building is. For all other areas, check for meters.

There is a physical smiley in residence for the First-to-Find. Please feel free to take it.

The earliest known blue dyes were made from plants - woad in Europe, indigo in Asia and Africa, while blue pigments were made from minerals, usually either lapis lazuli or azurite.

Woad is famous as the source of the blue dye that has been used to dye fibers for several thousand years in Europe and the Middle East. The pigment is extracted from the dark blue-green, spinach-like woad plant leaves. Woad is a native of the Mediterranean is closely related to broccoli, cabbage and rape seed. It grows readily and is considered a noxious weed in some states of the USA.

The process of making blue with woad was particularly long and noxious- it involved soaking the leaves of the plant for from three days to a week in human urine, ideally urine from men who had been drinking a great deal of alcohol, which was said to improve the color. At first the wool is pale yellow, but with exposure to air, the color gradually turns to green and then to blue.

Lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone, has been mined in Afghanistan for more than three thousand years, and was exported to all parts of the ancient world. Blue was a considered a beneficial color which would protect the dead against evil in the afterlife. Blue dye was used to color the cloth in which mummies were wrapped. Ultramarine was made from lapis lazuli. It cost far more than any other color, and it became the luxury color for the Kings and Princes of Europe. The cost of importing lapis lazuli by caravan across the desert from Afghanistan to Egypt was extremely high. Once the most valuable paint on earth, artist Dürer wrote in 1508 that 100 florins barely bought a pound of ultrama­rine. The same paint made from Afghan stones using the same recipe would cost £2,500 for the same quantity.

The pastel industry was threatened in the 15th century by the arrival from India of new blue dye, indigo, made from a shrub widely grown in Asia. Indigo blue had the same chemical composition as woad, but it was more concentrated and produced a richer and more stable blue. The countries with large and prosperous pastel industries tried to block the use of indigo. The German government outlawed the use of indigo in 1577, describing it as a “pernicious, deceitful and corrosive substance, the Devil’s dye.” In France, Henry IV, in an edict of 1609, forbade under pain of death the use of “the false and pernicious Indian drug”. It was forbidden in England until 1611. The efforts to block indigo were in vain; the quality of indigo blue was too high and the price too low for pastel made from woad to compete. In 1737 both the French and German governments finally allowed the use of indigo.

Blue Trivia

• Until the 18th century blue was spelled “blew.”
• Blue No. 2 is the same chemical that colors blue M&Ms and blue jeans
• Owls are the only birds that can see the color blue.
• People are often more productive in blue rooms.
• Mosquitoes are attracted to the color blue twice as much as to any other color.
• Blue is the overwhelming “favorite color.” It is seen as trustworthy, dependable, and committed. It is the least “gender specific” color, having equal appeal to both men and women.
• Blue, blue-green, and green are sacred colors in Iran, where they symbolize paradise.
• In Mexico, blue is the color of mourning.
• In Greece, the color blue is believed to ward off “the evil eye.” Those who believe in this Greek superstition often wear a blue charm necklace or blue bracelet for protection.
• The Romans had many different words for varieties of blue, but 2 words, both of foreign origin, became the most enduring; blavus, from the Germanic “blau”, which became bleu; and azureus, from the Arabic “lazaward”, which became azure.
• For Romans, blue was the color of working class clothing. It was also considered the color of barbarians.
• Nazar Bonjuk is a good-luck “evil eye” charm from Turkey. It was born of the age-old “evil eye” supersti­tion that one person can cast a spell on another. To prevent this, Turkish artisans created a blue glass “eye” that “looks” straight back at the spell-caster as if to say “I see what you’re doing, and you can’t get away with it!”
• In the Islamic world, blue was of secondary importance to green, be­lieved to be the favorite color of the Prophet Mohammed.
• King Louis IX of France, better known as Saint Louis (1214-1270), became the first King of France to regularly dress in blue.

Sources:

Color - A Natural History of the Palette: Victoria Finlay

www.sensationalcolor.com

www.industryofallnations.com/Jeans-At-Industry-Of-All-Nations-ccid_80.aspx

www.scientificamerican.com

woad.wordpress.com/

http://jezebel.com

www.cs.cmu.edu/~hulya/NazarBoncugu.html