A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire (Hardcover)

by Amy Butler Greenfield (Author) "FORTY MILES WEST OF FLORENCE, IN A fertile Tuscan valley not far from the Mediterranean Sea, lies the serene and sunlit city of Lucca. Known..." (more)
Key Phrases: cochineal imports, domesticated cochineal, cochineal prices, New Spain, United States, East India Company (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
"Elusive, expensive and invested with powerful symbolism, red cloth became the prize possession of the wealthy and well-born," Greenfield writes in her intricate, fully researched and stylishly written history of Europe's centuries-long clamor for cochineal, a dye capable of producing the "brightest, strongest red the Old World had ever seen." Discovered by Spanish conquistadors in Mexico in 1519, cochineal became one of Spain's top colonial commodities. Striving to maintain a trade monopoly, Spain fiercely guarded the secrets of cochineal cultivation in Mexico and only after centuries of speculation (was the red powder derived from plant or animal?) did 18th-century microscopes bring the mystery to light. Greenfield recounts the wild, clandestine attempts by adventurer naturalists to cultivate both the cochineal insect and its host plant, nopal, beyond their native Mexico, acts of folly driven by the desire for scientific fame and commercial profit. Greenfield's narrative culminates in the 19th-century discovery of synthetic dyes that, for a period, eclipsed cochineal. However, as she explains, owing to its safety, cochineal is back to stay as a cosmetics and food dye. Greenfield's absorbing account encompasses the history of European dyers' guilds, the use of pigments by artists such as Rembrandt and Turner, and the changing associations of the color red, from the luxurious robes of kings and cardinals to its latter-day incarnation as the garb of the "scarlet woman." 8 pages of color illus. not seen by PW.Agent, Tina Bennett.(May 2)
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From The Washington Post
One day, Amy Butler Greenfield was sitting in a library in Seville, Spain, perusing the cargo manifests of ships of the colonial era, when she noticed how often cochineal was mentioned. Why were the Spanish shipping so much of this special red dyestuff from Mexico? Intrigued by its apparent value, she decided to unearth its history. That Greenfield also comes from a family of dyers made the scholarly detective work all the more appealing to her.

The result, A Perfect Red, is a fascinating history of dyeing, as craft and culture, focusing on the social and economic importance of shades of red, the most vibrant of which were reserved for royalty. In the days before synthetic colors, some red dye came from plant sources such as henna or madder and some from insects such as Laccifer lacca (the latter was ideal for lacquering or shellacking wood). But competitive dyers sought "a perfect red," by which they meant a profitable one -- a dye that was stable, easily absorbed by fabric and resistant to fading.

When Hernán Cortés invaded Mexico, he found a society besotted with strong sensations, from blood sports to drug-level chocolate, which the Aztecs sometimes stirred with the powdered bones of their enemies. The emperor, Montezuma, claimed the right to wear the most brilliant red and imposed on his subjects a special tax to be paid in cochineal insects, from which the vibrant dye came. The Spanish quickly monopolized the world's supply of cochineal; in 1587 alone, they shipped 65 tons of it home. Other countries soon coveted it, and the equivalent of corporate espionage ensued.

People tried like the dickens to fathom cochineal's essence. For the longest time they couldn't even agree if it came from a plant or an animal. In an era of primitive microscopes, cochineal's secrets simply defied scrutiny, spawning recklessly high bets on what it was and lots of controversy, which Greenfield chronicles.

As it happens, cochineal comes from a fragile little insect that lives on prickly pear cactus. The female produces carminic acid to annoy ants and other predators, and she is the red dye. "Pinch a female cochineal insect," Greenfield writes, "and blood-red dye pours out. Apply the dye to mordant cloth, and the fabric will remain red for centuries."

Male and female differ wildly in this species. The wingless females crawl around on their cactus, waiting for a "flying husband" to descend. It's the female's bad luck to be engorged with a red fluid precious to European hominids greedier than any cadre of ants. The males don't have it any easier, though -- they die young, after their mouthparts wither.

You'd think dyers would have bred their own cochineal insects in Europe, but the bugs are notoriously hard to ranch. For centuries, Mexicans enjoyed success by hand-rearing small numbers, which they were able to breed for size and color, eventually producing a robust new species. Even so, cochineal insects were finicky about climate, and it took 70,000 dried insects to produce one pound of red dye. The more European monarchs and gentry wore the succulent hue, the more prominently cochineal figured in society and fed or bled the economy.

Why the royal obsession with red? Red lassos the eye. When a man sees bright red (a battle uniform, say, or a red dress), he pays real attention, and his adrenal gland secretes more adrenaline to tune his body for trouble. No one can stay calm long in an eye-jolting red room. Red flames and poisonous red frogs both signal danger. Sometimes red tells tales of pleasure. In the animal world, red often indicates ripe fruit or ripe females. Coca-Cola, Campbell Soup, and many other companies flash red in their packaging to entice customers. At heart, we're fragile sacks of red fluid. Spill a little in a timely way, through menstruation, and women can produce life; spill too much and we die.

It's small wonder the word red sashays through the language, as Greenfield reminds us. Anger us, and we see red. An unfaithful woman is branded with a scarlet letter. In red-light districts, people buy carnal pleasures. We like to celebrate red-letter days and roll out the red carpet, while trying to avoid red tape, red herrings and going into the red.

Greenfield has given us a superbly researched history of cochineal red, full of angles and tangents, curiosities and arcana. Some anecdotes bog down, but most are sprightly and charming. I enjoyed learning, for example, that when 25-year-old John Donne (later to win fame as a poet) joined a massive expedition under the command of the earl of Essex, he and his fellow sailors returned home with a dusty fortune pillaged from Spanish galleons: 27 tons of pirated cochineal.

Ironically, the reds we relish occur in the mind, not in the world. Apples are everything but red -- when light hits them, only the red rays are reflected into our eyes and we think: Wow, that's red! But that happens sub rosa, a product of the brain's fancy magic. Meanwhile, on the all-too-conscious level, fashionable reds can cause designers, bank balances and empires to rise or fall. Our quest for sense-pleasers bridges the worlds of biology and society, as Greenfield discovered that day in Seville, when, researching something else entirely, she found herself knee-deep in red dye.

Reviewed by Diane Ackerman
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins (April 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060522755
• ISBN-13: 978-0060522759
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #404,787 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best new book read all year, June 2, 2005

By	Bart E. Kahr "Professor of Chemistry" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In recent years, there have been published a number of excellent books about the history of color, including monographs focusing on natural and coal tar dyes. Amy Butler Greenfield's book stands at the very top of this list. Her focus, cochineal, is an extraordinary red dyestuff so aggressively coveted that in directed international trade and politics for centuries. The story that Butler Greenfield tells rests on an impressive mountain of scholarship that is hidden from the reader by wavy prose that carry us effortlessly between the colonial European powers and the locales in the West Indies and the Spanish Main where the cochineal beetle was cultivated. Even better however are the extensive notes and bibliography that are indeed available at the end of the book, aspects of popular history all too often omitted by publishers. HarperCollins should be congratulated for fully embracing the sources. Butler Greenfield is an excellent historian, an inspired writer, a natural story teller, and not a bad chemist either. A Perfect Red will be enjoyed by those who merely enjoy rip-roaring tales of conquest and piracy, as well as by those with a deeper interest in science and cultural history. It strikes a perfect balance between great fun and great learning. It has my highest recommendation.

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Read on Red, May 19, 2005

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Red is just a color; if we want a red shirt, red paint, or red curtains, we just go out and buy them, as we would articles of any other color. It may be that red is a special color, with associations of blood or anger or desire, but as a mere pigment, it isn't anything unusual. That was not the case in past centuries. In fact, red bankrolled the Spanish empire and prompted the growth of science at the expense of belief in an all-explaining Bible. It is surprising that a history can be written about a color, but in _A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire_ (HarperCollins), Amy Butler Greenfield has opened up an extraordinary story, and one that still touches us today. It is the history of our interaction with Dactylopius coccus, an insect that parasitizes a particular cactus in tropical America, an insect better known as cochineal. It turns out to be one of the most important insects in history.

There were reds before the New World was discovered. Dyers and artists were able to make plants and minerals yield russets and orange-reds fairly easily, but real red cloth was hard to manufacture. A more vivid red could be made from insects, like oak-kermes, that could be killed with vinegar and steam, and packed up to sell to dyers the world over. The dyers didn't know it, but these insects contain what is now known as carminic acid, a powerful red dye. It is this dye that the cochineal insect has, too, but it is far more powerful and less fastened to troublesome lipids. The conquistadors saw the colors that were produced in cloth in the new world, and brought back the dye to Spain starting in 1519. By 1580, kermes reds were out and cochineal reds were in. Spain profited from many New World finds, but the new dye was a chief one. Even pirates were glad to rob Spanish galleons for it. Commercial espionage was involved in trying to transplant it to other colonies. Cochineal provided naturalists with a problem in classification. As they did with other New World novelties, Europeans tried to find categorical guidance from the Bible, but the book did not help settle the question of whether the little pellets from which the dye was made came from plants, animals, or even something in between (a "wormberry"). Classic writers didn't help, either. Greenfield discusses the microscopy of Leeuwenhoek and others which eventually helped settle the issue in a scientific way.

The cutthroat competition in cochineal ended when William Perkin invented his famous mauve dye from coal tar products in 1856, leading to a revolution in dye chemistry. The market for the insects collapsed, but never vanished. There are those who favor "natural dyes" (although this group has a subcategory of people who would not countenance killing even insects for them). Bakers used to use cochineal "to make the apple and the gooseberry outblush the cherry and the plum," and it still is used in candy, ice cream, lipstick, and much more. (Perhaps we are only squeamish about eating insects if they are whole.) The main supplier these days is Peru, but there is competition from other countries, among them the ones where the cloak-and-dagger operations had transplanted the cactus and insects centuries ago. Greenfield's detailed study casts a welcome rubicund light on in biology, history, fashion, chemistry, and world economics.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scintillating for any history-, color-, or art-buff., July 19, 2005

By	S. Pearson (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amy B. Greenfield spoke at my local bookstore as this book was debuting, and boy is she, and her book, fabulous. She brought a jar of dried cochineal beetles to show everyone, as well as a half-dozen silk scarves she herself had dyed with cochineal. The four years of research she invested in this bewitching story are evident not only in the accuracy and thoroughness of her book, but in the riveting writing itself. She is clearly enamored of the subject, and seduces the reader into a shared state of fascination. _Red_ is without question the loveliest nonfiction I've read in years.