October 2024
Arts Almanac: Cochineal
by Jennifer Brant
Red is about as corporeal a colour as you can get. We pulse with a scarlet fluid, emblematic of life and life giving, reaching every part of our bodies through the tiniest of capillaries. The colour red has been with us from our earliest mark making. I touched briefly on the earliest reds, in the form of ochre, and then cinnabar, and eventually madder. What comes next in the story of red is an epic saga of espionage and piracy, with conquest and colonialism at its heart.
Who would have thought that one of the most valued commodities in the world in the 1500’s was a tiny bug? While the Spanish conquistadors first set out looking for gold, it was the bright red dye of the Aztecs that brought unexpected wealth and power to Spain. Cochineal is part of the scale family, and the female insect spends her life attached to a single spot of her host plant, unable to fly, feeding and laying eggs. As this makes her vulnerable to predators, she produces carminic acid to defend herself. If you squish a female cochineal insect, you are left with a bright red liquid. This dye is one of the most lightfast reds in the natural world and fabric that has been dyed will hold its colour for centuries. But unlike other members of the scale family with broader appetites, cochineal feeds only on the prickly pear cactus. They also require a specific climate so all attempts to farm them elsewhere failed. Thus began the transatlantic cochineal trade, monopolized by Spain and envied by other European countries, as the demand for scarlet garments and pigments tore through the aristocracy.
The lives of the Aztec people pressed into the service of Spain’s cochineal trade were brutal. The oppressors decimated a culture whose rich spiritual, political, and artistic traditions cannot be overestimated, and subjected the remaining people, with very few exceptions, to slavery and indentured servitude. The sailors who carried the cochineal across the sea were regularly overtaken by pirates and privateers, looking to profit from the demand for cochineal. The merchants, dyers, painters, weavers, and royals all had a part to play in this 300-year obsession with red. If you are interested in diving deeper, I recommend A Perfect Red by Amy Butler Greenfield. It’s a comprehensive and dynamic look at the history of cochineal. - Jen Brant