Warping Arda: Spectrum

[clodia_metelli]

Title: Warping Arda: Spectrum
Author: clodia_metelli
Characters: Celebrían, OC, Erestor, the twins, Elrond.
Rating: K+
Warnings: None.
Book/Source: Tolkien generally.
Disclaimer: I am not J.R.R. Tolkien and I make no money from this.
Summary: A dyer's garden of drabbles; thanks to crowdaughter, randy_o and ignoblebard for the prompts! MEFA 2010 Second Place in Genres: Character Study:

Comments

[clodia_metelli]

Oh wonderful! It's very much one of my hobbies, so naturally I was a little worried about being self-indulgent; but then I went ahead and posted anyway because really, what the hell. :'D

The fun thing about indigo is that it wasn't very common until whenever it was that they found a relatively cheap and easy route to India -- eighteenth century, probably; I forget the details. Before that I think it was very much a luxury import and seems to have been used more for paint and and in medicine (not that it has any real medicinal properties, I think, or possibly not ones that would have been any use for what it was used for; but most traditional "medicines" don't, so no difference there.) Plus, of course, for faking gemstones -- according to one absolutely fascinating ancient papyrus full of recipes, anyway. Woad was commonly used for blue; there was a flourishing market for growing and dyeing the stuff in the middle ages/early modern period; and the woad dyers whined horribly when imported indigo became cheap enough to be commonly used as a textile dye (it contains the same chemical as woad and produces the same blue colour, but in a much more concentrated form). Both indigo and woad are rather special when it comes to actually dyeing with the stuff, but I'll spare you that.

... and by now I'm sure you're asleep. But what the hell! it interests me. ;)