Re: Indanthrene is not "real Indigo"

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From: Katharine Thayer (kthayer@pacifier.com)
Date: 09/20/03-07:46:03 AM Z


Geesh (speaking of things that simply refuse to DIE!)

Judy wrote:

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Katharine Thayer wrote:
>> If "indigo" has extreme
> > covering power, as Judy claims, it's probably because of the lamp black
> > in almost all of them, because the blues used across brands are quite
> > different in covering power.
> >

>I only declare the "Indigo's" I used to be good in covering power... they
were Daniel Smith, Rowney & Winsor Newton. All have enough thalo for
blue
>to predominate... and thalo is one of the strongest colors.

 All the "indigo" convenience mixtures have enough blue in them to look
blue; that's not the issue. The Rowney and W&N have pthalo in them; the
Daniel Smith has no pthalo in it whatever, being a mixture of
indanthrone and lamp black. So to say that all three of these have
enough pthalo to have covering power makes no sense, especially since
pthalo has no covering power, being a very intense, but also extremely
transparent, pigment. I say, again, with a rather frustrated sigh, that
if "indigo" convenience mixtures can be said to have covering power,
it's because of the lamp black in all of them, which has extreme
covering power. I think Judy is confusing "covering power" with
intensity of color, which is a whole different issue.

As to how indanthrone is spelled and pronounced, I've only ever seen it
the one way; if there's some obscure text somewhere that spells it
another way fine, but I'll spell it the way my trusted sources (and that
doesn't include Wilcox, by the way) spell it and the way Daniel Smith
spells it on my tube of indanthrone.

But your rejoinder misses my whole point, which still stands. It's true
that back in the BEFORE time there was another indigo pigment; I've
spoken about this at length a year or two ago, either here or on the
Bostick & Sullivan site, or both. But in 1883, a synthetic indigo was
developed that was thought (wrongly, it turned out) to be more permanent
than the original indigo. This synthetic indigo, PB66, is the fugitive
pigment that we have called indigo for the last hundred years. And that
indigo is NOT indanthrone, and I've never confused it with indanthrone.
That's the point; all this other stuff is red herrings and smoke and
straw persons.
Katharine Thayer


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