Indigo

Spotlight

13. Jul. 2009

By Prof. Axel Venn

And somewhere there,
we find indigo, the color that
replaced the dyer’s woad.

Indigo is the color with so many characteristics that it is difficult to grasp. This is most probably due to the fact that indigo takes a typical “right in the middle” position in our collective consciousness of colors and until now has not attracted attention with particularly eye-catching characteristics.

The answer to the question “What does indigo look like?” usually fades away in silence or stumbles from assumptions to a mess in a discursive torrent of words full of doubts.

On the one hand, there is a suspicion of the danger of darkening, on the other hand, indigo shows contours and conciseness but only on white ground.

The cause for the triumph and the latent and silent attention but not popularity is based on pleas such as “Be quiet!”, “Mind the kaleidoscopes!” and “Hide!”.

Indigo includes the color codes for work, function, assiduity, reliability, obedience and ordinariness. This color like no other describes the activities of mechanical work: with this color only, the last part of the industrial revolution could begin and turn to a success, and at the same time the color is a sign for its downfall. Indigo discloses the signs for the rhythm of the speed of assembly lines – unimaginable to show this with colors such as rose, pink or tropical green, cherry red, lavender, purple or corn yellow and neon green. The affinity to dirty engine oil, heavily smudged mechanics’ faces and the blue, which sticks under the finger nails is obvious.

Apron dresses, working clothes for factories, the field and the garden but also in the leisure time for a barbecue in the arbor and for doing handicrafts in the cellar. When washed eighty times, they show the most wonderful indigo one could imagine.

Rough treatment, sweat and moisture, the age and the virtues of necessary and useful activities leave valuable traces of patina, wounds, destruction, patches and other expensive rescue maneuvers. Wherever indigo appears, there is something to do. Only Sundays remain free from indigo. The elegant, enjoyable and absurd moments of life are as much characterized by the absence of indigo as pieces of cake, fresh drinks, opera evenings, children’s birthdays, Easter walks, nights of love including previous dream weddings, holiday idylls, convertible rides, summer mornings, paradises, tenors, sopranos, flutists, harpists, holidays on Capri, Heinz Erhard movies and hummingbirds.http://www.colortrend.de/artikel/indigo-ist-der-farbton-mit-den-vielen-eigenschaften-beitrag-von-prof-axel-venn-in-frank-stein-material-and-ideas-for-future-living/

Working clothes for factories, the field and the garden. Photo: Klemens Ortmeyer

Indigo can mostly be found in diffuse, half-hidden areas, located between terra incognita and Forbidden City, rather suited as a cover than as a signal, rather an ambiguous undercover agent than a PR advisor besotted with media, of the about eight to ten million colors humans can perceive. Its usability however is not necessarily affected by these facts. Especially the characteristic of disposing of widely spread options results in an extension of the field of talent and grace. And how talented indigo actually is as a commenting and attributive object becomes clear to us after watching it for some minutes. Numerous associative synaesthetic and anecdotal characteristics show an image section full of narrative escapades.

The closeness to paperweights, material fatigue, party administrative proceedings, wreaths and control functions is as obvious as the relationship of the indigo manifest to officeholders, broken axles, car cemeteries, scrapping bonuses, inorganic things, shares’ crises, colleagues’ scolding, ticket controls and office furniture.

Cor “Cosma”

The grey daily routine, the grey sea, grey mold, grey hair and grey mouse as well as numerous suits, dresses, hairs, beards and vests would be in better hand with indigo. It is all just a question of perception and light. Since it is hardly possible for reality to be congruent with perception, at least a change of name to indigo mouse and indigo theory would be possible because there is no beautiful, pure and clear grey just as there is no colorful red or brilliant indigo.

Indigo has become that valuable for us because it makes us humble and does not match evening dresses and dinner jackets. Indigo is never procured intentionally but always (intentionally?) foisted on us and sold as blue. Or is it the myth, the nostalgic strangeness, which finagles goodwill and suggests democratic behavior? Neither accident nor affection conditioned the success of indigo, but it was the misery, the favorable price and the large quantity availability, which led to the phenomenon’s triumph, first as a natural product and then at the end of the 19th century as an even lower priced chemical colorant.

Cor “Cuvert”

The indistinctiveness of indigo is based on a polychrome, softly toned, gently dulled, shadow-like, sometimes metallically shimmering surface quality, which mainly consists of a blue to blue-violet color, a little bit of ivy green, a tiny little bit of copper and a pinch of bronze as well as a lot of black. Depending on the light, material, structure and topography of the ground, sometimes a vague shimmer and flash seems to appear, which appears to be an ambivalence to the superficial matte impression.

If you want to create convincing spatial experiences, this can only be achieved with varnishing color layers: a greyish and dirty dry white, followed by a reddish Prussian blue, then a light violet and a grey, which is enriched by terracotta with a lot of pigments. All this should be applied well-dosed and dry on a dry ground. When regarded in light and twilight, in the shadow and in sunlight, the color layer will loose all of its flatness and disclose an amorphous miracle of colors named indigo.

Suddekor’s “Tosca” and “Marmor de Mazi”

Info Indigo

“Indigo, one of the most important colorants, which serves for dying various weave fibers and the color of which distinguishes itself by enormous beauty and high authenticity and therefore has already been used as an opaque color for painting in ancient times.” (translation of the definition in the German dictionary Brockhaus Konversations Lexikon, 1902). In their blossom, indigo plants are cut just above the ground and then processed while still fresh, mostly. They are divided into little pieces, watered and then a fermentation process begins. Scutching and stirring processes of the applied air supply make the liquid, which is dissolved in ammoniac and contained in indigo white oxidize. A muddy sediment is precipitated, dried in the air and then brought to sale in foursquare pieces.

A difference is made between eastern Indian and western Indian provenance, i.e. between Bengal, Coromandel, Oudh, Madras, Karachi, Manila and Java indigo on the one hand and the western Indian Caracas, New Granada and Mexico indigo.

Indigo plant and indigo mill

Indigo clearly owes its importance to its use as a coloring product. Indigo colorations and prints are characterized by high washing, light and rubbing fastness. They superbly stick to the majority of fauna and botanical materials. For the coloring process, the colorants have been ground to a fine mush with the addition of lime wash made of burnt lime and iron vitriol in a so-called indigo mill with water. Afterwards, 100 to 250 shares of water were added. The coloring goods were than dipped into this dye bath. The number of dipping steps was one of the decisive factors for the depth, purity or blurring of the desired indigo color.

By the way, indigo has been known since ancient times. As of the late Middle Ages, it replaced the dyer’s woad, which had been used until then. Natural indigo has mainly been replaced by the synthetic colorant, which is produced according to the so-called Heumann indigo synthesis, a synthesis of anthranilic acid and phenylglycine.

Originally published in frank.stein magazine #24. Reproduced by kind permission of Frank Stein.