Why was purple dye so rare historically?

Question

I know natural purple itself was difficult to obtain, but why didn’t they just mix red and blue? Were those also rare? Did it just not work?

In: Other

Answer 1

It came from a specific sea snail. Nothing else produced anything close to that color. And that snail was relatively rare and pretty hard to harvest. So it was expensive by necessity and the fact that it was expensive made it a status symbol.