Brazilwood (bresil)

Dublin Core

Title

Brazilwood (bresil)

Subject

Brazilwood is any of a number of tropical trees of the Senna genus Caesalpinia, such as C. brasiliensis (from Brazil), C. crista (from Pernambuco), C. echinata (peachwood from Nicaragua), or C. sappan (sappanwood native to Southeast Asia, including India, Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines.) The colorant Brasilin in the wood yields a deep red to brownish color. Brazilwood dye has been used for inks, varnish tints, paints, textile and leather dyes, and wood stains.

Description

In medieval Europe, sappanwood from Sumbawa in the Indonesian archipelago, was widely used for dyeing textiles. In the sixteenth century, the introduction of other redwoods, including Brazilwood, from the New World that were found to be more powerful coloring agents eventually led to the replacement of woods from Asia.

Source

In Ms. Fr. 640:
Fol. 6r – “For laying down and seating burnished gold and giving red or green or blue”
... And if you want to lay in rouge clair & glaze with it, grind Venice laque platte on marble with walnut or linseed oil. Once ground, mix turpentine or spike lavender varnish & apply on the gold with the paintbrush. Brazilwood & laque ronde die...

Fol. 33v recommends using Brazilwood to imitate blood

Fol. 33v – "For making blood or wine issue from someone’s forehead or from a wall"
Take a funnel or funnel of fer blanc which is double-walled in the body but not in the spout. Make a small hole at the top edge & another, slightly bigger, on the inner wall that will be a little above the spout, just as you can see in the adjacent example. Then when you want to use it, put in wine or liquid rosette of Brazilwood or black cherry juice, and blocking the hole of the spout with your little finger, make sure that the funnel is well filled in order that the wine can enter there between the double walls through the hole at the side, & if it does not enter well, making it seem as if you are tasting the wine, suck & draw in a little air, drinking where the little hole is…

This recipe on fol. 43v contains no wine, but transmutes red “wine” into white

Fol. 43v – “Varied and transmuted wine”
Grate brazilwood very finely, put it to soak one or two hours in clear water, then take this tinted water & add to it some clear water & you will make wine as claret colored as you like. If you please, put a drop of lemon or orange juice in it & it will immediately turn white. It can be drunk without danger.

Contributor

<p>“Brazilwood,” The Conservation and Art Materials Encyclopedia (CAMEO), ed. Michele Derrick. <a href="http://cameo.mfa.org/wiki/Brazilwood">http://cameo.mfa.org/wiki/Brazilwood</a>.</p>

<p>George Bryan Souza, “The VOC’s price current records in the long eighteenth century: Commodities and prices in global, intra-Asian, and regional Asian maritime economic history,” in <i>Intra-Asian Trade and Industrialization: Essays in Memory of Yasukichi Yasuba</i>, ed. A.J.H. Latham and Heita Kawakatsu (London; New York: Routledge, 2009), 37-51.</p>

<p>Jo Kirby, “Lake,” Grove Art Online. 2003; Accessed 17 Dec. 2021. <a href="https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000048810">https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000048810</a>.</p>

<p>Rw Dapson and CI Bain, “Brazilwood, sappanwood, brazilin and the red dye brazilein: from textile dyeing and folk medicine to biological staining and musical instruments,” <i>Biotechnic & Histochemistry<i> 90, no. 6 (2015): 401-423.</p>


<p>Image: “How the People Cut and Bring the Bresil to the Ships,” from <i>La Cosmographic universelle d’André Thevet cosmographe du roy</i> by André Thevet (Paris: Chez Pierre L’Huillier, 1575). Woodcut. John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.</p>

<p><i>Helena Seo, Columbia University</i></p>

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Citation

“Brazilwood (bresil),” om+ka, accessed March 29, 2024, https://catapanoth.com/omandka/items/show/4.

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