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

Blue was even harder to produce then purple. There are not many plants and minerals that have a lasting blue color. Of course its cost varied depending on region as some areas did have some sources of blue pigments. However if you had access to purple sea snails then it was much cheaper to make purple from that then to mix the very expensive blue dies with red dies.