Turnsole
Turnsole, katasol, or folium was a dyestuff prepared from the annual plant Chrozophora tinctoria.
History
Turnsole became a mainstay of medieval
Folium ("leaf"), was actually derived from the three-lobed fruit (illustration), not the leaves, and medieval recipes are explicit that the fruits must not be broken, or the seeds released, during production of the pigment.[3] The fruits were collected in autumn (August, September).
In the early fifteenth century, Cennino Cennini, in his Libro dell' Arte gives a recipe "XVIII: How you should tint paper turnsole color" and "LXXVI To paint a purple or turnsole drapery in fresco." (though neither of these recipes use or describe turnsole). Textiles soaked in the dye vat would be left in a close damp cellar in an atmosphere produced by pans of urine. It was not realized that the decomposition of urea in the urine was producing ammonia, but the technique reminds us how foul-smelling was the dyer's art.
It was sold impregnated into small pieces of linen and then extracted for use. The colour has been attributed to several different chemicals, including an
Turnsole was used as a food colorant, mentioned in Du Fait de Cuisine which suggests steeping it in milk. The French Cook by
Herbals indicated that the plant grows on sunny, well-drained Mediterranean slopes and called it solsequium ("sun-follower") from its habit of turning its flowers to face the sun; alternatively it might be called "Greater Verucaria";[6] early botanical works gave it synonyms of Morella, Heliotropium tricoccum and Croton tinctorium.
Medicinal uses
Medicinal properties were ascribed to it in the first century AD by Dioscorides in De Materia Medica and also in medieval pharmacopoeia texts.[3] There have now been studies in the 21st century demonstrating that it did not have significant anti-inflammatory properties.[7]
Notes
- ^ Thompson, Daniel V. Jr; Hamilton, G.H. (1933). De Arte Illuminandi: The Technique of Manuscript Illumination. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 41.
- ^ M. Aceto, E. Calà, A. Agostino, G. Fenoglio, A. Idone, C. Porte, M. Gulmini, On the identification of folium and orchil on illuminated manuscripts, Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.saa.2016.08.046.
- ^ PMID 32426456.
- ^ Schultz, Isaac (17 April 2020). "The Mystery of a Medieval Blue Ink Has Been Solved". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
- .
- ^ So named in a recipe for producing the colorant, Pro tornasolio faciendo, British Library, Sloane MS 1754, folio 235 verso, quoted in Daniel V. Thompson, Jr., "Medieval Color-Making: Tractatus Qualiter Quilibet Artificialis Color Fieri Possit from Paris, B. N., MS. latin 6749", Isis 22.2 (February 1935, pp. 456–468) p 458 note.
- . Retrieved 20 April 2020.