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

Some purples were possible. When you hear that purple dye was hard to get, it was that a specific kind of purple dye was hard to get, and it was that colour in particular that was associated with royalty. Other purples were limited by the available red and blue dyes, so weren’t able to produce something that looked like Tyrian Purple.