Why was purple pigment history difficult to produce? Couldn’t ascestors have just mixed red and blue, instead of laboriously extracting it from sea snails?

Question

Why was purple pigment history difficult to produce? Couldn’t ascestors have just mixed red and blue, instead of laboriously extracting it from sea snails?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

As someone who paints a lot, I can tell you there’s purple and there’s “purple.” Mixing any red and blue will get you kind of a yucky hue of purple. The really nice, rich hues are hard to mix out of just straight red and blue.

So it’s already hard to do with ready-made paints, imagine doing it out of crushed mineral pigments. It would be super hard and likely not very high quality