Purple

[Swampster]

"A Tunisian man has pieced together bits of a local secret linked to ancient emperors: how to make a prized purple dye using the guts of a sea snail."
https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/07/passion-for-purple-revives-ancient-dye.html

Interesting to see the range of colours he produced.

[Anton]

Clever lad.  I hope it makes him rich. The colours look great.

[Adrian Nayler]

We've mentioned purple dye before (for example this tread and https://forum.soa.org.uk/index.php?msg=26882)

The link below accesses a paper "Ancient Purple Dyeing" and a more technical study "TYR - A study on ancient purple". Both contain colour photographs of the results from modern experiments with replicating Tyrian purple, on wool and silk. Interesting if you are considering painting senior officers in fancy duds or the lesser orders in not quite Tyrian purple.

https://ahlebanon.com/ahl-free-books/

[Ian61]

Yes, this is now a popular idea for folks 'recreating' old techniques. Can confirm a very smelly process! From the murex snail there is quite a range of colours depending on the exact snail type and the processing done. The 'Blog' appears to have been removed but this sounds like the old chap who started doing this some time ago and was certainly at the start of the trend in that area of the world.