What color is Saffron?

[Ace of Spades]

There's a song from the American Civil War about a man collecting the ladies' urine to extract the saltpeter for the manufacture of gunpowder.
Please enjoy! http://store.bobbyhorton.com/track/john-harrolson

Cheers,
Rob

[mollinary]

IIRC Saffron Walden in Essex gets its name from the fact that it was the major import centre for the spice in times gone by.

Not for importing the spice, but for growing the crocus from which it was extracted for, among other things, medical uses in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Mollinary

[d_Guy]

Once the leak of information began, it moved from a wee trickle to a flow that could hardly be staunched. I could almost hear it tinkling down on the pavement. Many pennies were spent. Much useful and fun information.

Peter, thanks for that blog link. Contemporary descriptions speak of bright yellow - although light sand to dark ochre seems possible.

Steve and Mollinary - I had never heard of Saffron Walden and looked through a bunch of links in Wikipedia (and elsewhere). Seems to agree with Mollinary's point about the crocuses (crocii?). 50K to 75K blossoms to make one pound of saffron. Would explain Kitty's point about the expense.

My best understanding now is Saffron is a color (colour) description that can be achieved my any number of ways. I may need to follow fsn's suggestion of using multi-shades (and try to make them more noticable). 

Thanks to all (even Westmarcher who provided an important safety tip).

[Terry37]

I wold use a yellow ocher, which is a nice mellow yellow, but also has a touch of brown in it.

Terry

[SV52]

Best I've found is an old Citadel colour 'Golden Yellow', I use it for Highlanders, Irish and for Indian figures.  The pot is almost gone so I'm mean with it.

[paulr]

I hesitate to say this but...

FSN's suggestion is a good one

Multi-shades makes sense when clothes are dyed with organic dyes, I would suggest using 3 or 5 different shades

[fsn]

FSN's suggestion is a good one

[paulr]

 

[FierceKitty]

Chuckle....

Btw, the point about monks' robes' matching my desert cloth is pretty accurate; when I first showed it to Lee, I posed in it and got a scowl from my pious better half in return. Just a touch of burnt umber added to the colour of my cloth (visible in many photographs of my battles, excluding pike-and-shot, ancient Chinese, and SYW. for which I use olive green), and you're ready to shave your head and pretend to be rejecting the pleasures of bodily existence.

Not only is saffron rather dear, it's far too tasty to waste on clothes, writes a nudist foodie. Save it for seafood stews, kebabs, kormas, and pilaos.

[d_Guy]

Some great visuals, Kitty. I particularly like coriander but detest cilantro - both come from the same plant, I think.

SV52, It was looking at your Flodden Highlanders that decided me on going heavy on saffron. Its interesting that the ascension of Jame VI as James I seems to mark the transition from saffron to unbleached linen ( in both Ireland and Scotland). Correlation does not imply causation, but...   
Vallejo Golden Brown might match the Citadel color.

OK - at least three* saffron colors it is!  Thanks all 

Terry, I use artistic acrylic dark ocher for the base colour of all my thatched rooves followed by dry brushing with the yellow ochre you mentioned. If I get enough contrast I may use one or both as well. Thanks for the reminder.  My artist acrylics are "out of sight, out of mind" (and I played with the thatched buildings for half the day yesterday).

* technically, fsn suggested 99 different shades while Paul suggested 3 to 5, just saying.

[fsn]

According to a lichen dye website - "It's all an experiment and many factors determine the ultimate color: the age of the plant, the pH of the water, the type of fabric all are factors."



http://www.instructables.com/id/Creating-Lichen-Dyes-Letharia-vulpina-or-Wolf-Lich/

[SV52]

To be honest I think it's possible to get too hung up on 'true' colours, especially in the good old bad old days.  Quality control I suspect was not at the top of the list. 

Vegetable dyes are prone to hosts of variables; quality of the growing season, quantity of dyestuff available, temperature both ambient and of the fluids, etc., etc. Not to mention laundry or the lack of it and the relatively poor 'fixing' of natural as opposed to artificial dyes. A motley crew would look fine to me 

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Dye colour wasn't fixed until artificial dyes appeared, late 1800's, early 1900's. Before then the dye would bleach rapidly, and could even wash out if insufficient mordent (fixative) wasn't used. So the British red coat would be scarlet or even orange.....

[d_Guy]

It is, of course, easier to paint using a very narrow palette, but I have very few units that use "uniform" colours (although in 10mm I now think uniformity looks better).

In our FIW and AWI re-enactment group we spent a good deal of time working with vegetable dyes (starting usually with collecting the plants and roots).
As has been said the results are highly variable and entail  much experimentation. Totally unexpected results were often our best results.

Ace's Civil War song reminded me of homespun which lead to digging this out of a storage chest:

We bought local (washed) wool, carded it and spun it in to yarn which was then dyed. The above was done with yellow onion skins.
I had forgotten about it but it seems to be in the "saffron" color family (although purely accidental).

Our loyalists regimental coats where made from pre-washed and tightly woven wool. We used nettles to get the green and the facings were done with madder (powered, from the Mother Country). The madder started a a fairly bright brick red but after seven years of "campaigning"
became almost a primrose pink.

We used mordants (fixers) on some of these but I can no longer remember what got what. 

[paulr]

Interesting