Red! Laal!

An ode to Red through resin lac, sappanwood and manjistha-madder creeper!

Red is the colour at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet.

Reds range from the brilliant yellow-tinged scarlet and vermillion to bluish-red crimson, and vary in shade from the pale red pink to the dark red burgundy.

“If you want to make a lovely violet colour, take fine lac [red lake], ultramarine blue (the same amount of the one as of the other) with a binder”.

Red lac, also called red lake, crimson lake or carmine lake, was an important red pigment in Renaissance and Baroque art.
Unlike vermilion or red ochre, made from minerals, red lake pigments are made by mixing organic dyes, made from insects or plants, with white chalk or alum. Red lac was made from the gum lac, the dark red resinous substance secreted by various scale insects, particularly the Laccifer lacca from India. Other red lakes were made from the rose madder plant and from the brazilwood tree.
The human eye sees red when it looks at light with a wavelength between approximately 625 and 740 nanometers. The light just past this range is called infrared, or below red, and cannot be seen by human eyes, although it can be sensed as heat.

At sunrise and sunset, when the path of the sunlight through the atmosphere to the eye is longest, the blue and green components are removed almost completely, leaving the longer wavelength orange and red light. The remaining reddened sunlight can also be scattered by cloud droplets and other relatively large particles, which give the sky above the horizon its red glow.

The red!! The Red!

Own your red! Be your red! Show your red! Tame your red! You red is your own!

Laal!