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Tarbicus · 01-29-2005, 06:36 PM

Here's something of a Roman military fashion parade. 
 
Ugly Fashion Parade 
 
Not too fussed on the yellow, but I think the checked is quite fetching 
 
Jim/Tarbicus

Carlton Bach · 01-29-2005, 07:15 PM

I'm a bit dubious about blue. The kind of deep blue we see in some drawings, anyway. I'm wondering about the price of bulk-purchasing the pigments. 
 
Red wouldn't be a problem. Plenty of iron-oxide earths are red, as is madder and a host of less convenient plant dyes. Yellow, ditto, ochre earth makes a nice, rich yellow paint and you don't even need to go to the trouble of buying safflower - lots of dyestuffs around. Green is a touch more problematic, but green earth and copper salts will do nicely. Black is cheap, you can use soot, and for white both lead acetate and tin oxide were available. 
 
Blue, though - I can't think of any good pigment. There's azurite and ultramarine, but both would be quite pricey. Copper sulfate isn't suitable because it dissolves in water. Could the Romans precipitate a woad lake? Or produce sufficient amounts of smalt? 
 
Anyone out there who has more data on that kind of thing?

01-29-2005, 07:54 PM

If you are ever in London and visiting the British Museum (which I reckon we all would on this list ), turn right from the BM gates, and visit the artist supplies shop Cornelissen in Great Russell Street (also with mail order at www.cornelissen.com/) 
 
An astonishing time warp of a place with its Victorian wood panels which still has huge glass jars filled with madder root, lapis lazuli, gum tragacanth, rabbits glue etc etc. I am seriously tempted to gild some equipment using their kit and advice. 
From their catalogue, some examples , on sale at the shop:- 
"Orpiment 
Arsenic trisulphide. Bright yellow and opaque. 
First used by the ancient Egyptians. 
Superseded in the Middle Ages by lead and tin yellows 
Realgar 
Arsenic disulphide. Yellow orange colour. First 
used by the ancient Egyptians. 
Litharge 
Lead monoxide. Pale yellow similar to Naples 
Yellow. Little use as a pigment but often used as a 
drying agent in varnishes. Used by Romans 
Gamboge 
Natural tree resin. Bright, transparent yellow. 
Soluble in alcohol and is often used as a colourant 
for alcohol based varnishes 
Lead Tin Yellow 
Bright yellow first used in the Middle ages as a 
replacement for Orpiment. Suitable for oil based 
media 
Vermillion Deep 
Synthetic Mercuric Sulphide. Bright, opaque red. 
In use since Roman times. 
Rose Madder 
Alizarin lake made by extracting dye from madder 
root and precipitating onto an inert base. In use 
since Roman times 
Verdigris 
Hydrated copper acetate. Early artificial pigment 
which dates from Roman times 
Malachite 
Greenish variety of native copper carbonate used 
as a pigment by ancient Egyptians. 
Synthetic Malachite 
Artificial Copper Carbonate 
Blue Verditer 
Copper hydroxide plus copper carbonate. Widely 
used in mid 18th century. Best in non oil based 
media 
Egyptian Blue 
Mixture of copper silicates. One of the earliest 
artificial pigments. Used in Egypt from about 3000 
BC then used by the Romans. Superseded by 
smalt. Suitable for fresco and distemper 
Azurite 
Native basic copper carbonate. Rare antecedent of 
cobalt and cerulean blues. Usage dates back to the 
Romans. Works poorly in oil and is therefore used 
primarily in aqueous media 
Genuine Lapis Lazuli 
Usage dates from the Middle Ages when it was the 
only reliable blue pigment. Different intensities of 
genuine ultramarine are caused by the varying 
intensifies of colour in the original lazurite vein. 
South American origin 
Smalt 
A variety of cobalt blue glass. Historically 
considered to be the direct continuation of 
Egyptian Blue. First made in the 17th century. 
Genuine Ivory Black 
Made by burning ivory scraps. Fine and intense 
with a high carbon content."

Carlton Bach · 01-29-2005, 09:27 PM

which brings us back to the problem. There's Egyptian Blue, which may or may not work with casein tempera (boesner advises against it), and azurite and ultramarine, which work well in tempera, but cost a fortune. 
 
The only thing I could imagine would be a woad lake, but as I said, I have no clue whether it could be done.

Caius Fabius · 01-30-2005, 02:30 AM

I have seen some recreations in an Osprey book of ancient Egyptians with blue shields, taken from where I cannot tell. If the surface of a shield is linen covered, and the shield has a waterproof cover, is blue more likely? 
 
"Just before class started, I looked in the big book where all the world's history is written, and it said...." Neil J. Hackett, PhD ancient history, professor OSU, Edited by: <A HREF=http://p200.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=caiusfabius>Caius Fabius</A> <IMG HEIGHT=10 WIDTH=10 SRC="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ROMANISROMANORVM/files/C%20Fabius%201988b.jpg" BORDER=0> at: 1/30/05 7:10 am

01-30-2005, 02:44 AM

I went looking for ancient pigments and came across this: www.kremer-pigmente.de/en...10060e.htm This is a quote from the above featured link: "Egyptian blue is stable in all media and no color change has been observed when it is applied with various organic media." I would assume that would include a casin or milk based media! Edited by: <A HREF=http://p200.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=petreius>Petreius</A> at: 1/30/05 3:46 am

01-30-2005, 11:50 AM

I have seen that Legio XX is using milk paint for their scuta now, what are you guys using? Some of the milk paint I have seen online would cost as much as the rest of the raw materials for a shield. Where are you purchasing your paints, is there a site that is reasonably priced?

Vadormarius · 01-30-2005, 12:28 PM

I've gotten some from the Old Fashioned Milk Paint Company. Of the sort of ready made stuff out there (you still have to add water and mix it) it seems to be the most reasonably priced (at least it was 2 years ago). It is also easy to use. I've used both the red and the white. Keep in mind that it does not produce a smooth glossy surface like a modern paint. As such, I would lean toward using darker colors as keeping a white surface from getting dirty is difficult with this kind of paint. Probably the cheapest alternative (but the most work) would be to make your own from scratch. I've seen recipes posted on the Internet. 
 
Vadormarius/Jim

Carlton Bach · 01-30-2005, 03:07 PM

While I'm not entirely sold on the idea that scuta were painted exclusively with milk-based paint, it'sa actually fairly easy to make and reasonably cheap to get the basic ingredients. 
 
If you want to do it from scratch, you'll need quicklime or slaked wet lime (I get mine from an art supply shop, but I'm told it's cheaper to get quicklime in agricultural supply shops if you don't live in the middle of a city. You'll need to slake it youself, and keep it wet) and curds or cheese. You mash up the cheese into a homogenous paste and add slaked lime (I use between 1:2 and 1.5:2, depending on how hard the cheese was - anything up to new Gouda works if you grind it up well). The resulting goo needs adding a little water, but can be used as a base for paints, or as a glue. 
 
Most good art supply shops will also sell you liquid casein binder, which is mostly the same thing (except it's made in a chemically clean environment and with borax, not lime). I prefer using it because it's quicker. 
 
All you need to do is mix in the pigment powder, let the whole thing settle for a couple of hours, and paint. When thoroughly dried, the surface is reasonably water- and wear-resistant, though I prefer adding a layer of varnish afterwards. 
 
Again, I know this is period for medieval shields (as is the use of egg as a binder, which is less pleasant to work with, but dries harder). About Roman stuff, I only have second-hand information.

Crispvs · 02-01-2005, 01:38 AM

"I'm a bit dubious about blue. The kind of deep blue we see in some drawings, anyway....Could the Romans precipitate a woad lake?" 
 
Well, Paullus has provided us with a good list of dye recipes, and if we take Vegetius at face value the Classis Brittanica weren't short of blue dye or paint. 
 
"Red wouldn't be a problem. Plenty of iron-oxide earths are red, as is madder and a host of less convenient plant dyes." 
 
I am led to believe that madder can also be used to produce everything from brown to yellow. Not all material fragments which have produced traces of madder need necessarily have been red therefore. 
 
The local availabily of dyes may also not have been as important and we tend to assume. It was possible to make and possibly dye clothing somewhere far away from where it would be used, and then either sent as gifts or shipped as commercial orders. As I have mentioned previously in this thread, the Vindolanda tablets contain references to orders or red cloaks, green cloaks and white cloaks in specific quantities. We don't know what they were to be used for, but equally, we do not know where they originally came from. 
 
"The only time a color could be definitively attributed to the Praetorians to my knowledge, however, was the green shown on Nero's praetorians (the golden palace relief). Their cloaks were a rich dark green, and the tunics were either green or off-white, I can't exactly remember. The shields themselves were dished, round ones faced in bronze" 
 
I assume you have Graham Sumner's first Osprey book on military clothing. As far as I know there is only one green clad soldier shown in the Golden House fresco (not relief) and the identification as a praetorian is, I believe, tentatively based on the rather insecure assumption that one of Nero's guardsmen must have posed for the picture. Sumner's reconstruction of this soldier is, of necessity, somewhat imaginative, with the original picture not preserving as much detail as we would like. The fact that he wears an apparently archaic helmet and carries what appears to be an argive shield has been used to suggest that he is a praetorian euipped in 'traditional' fashion. This is possible but it is equally possible that he is a figure from Greek or Roman history or mythology, such as Hector, Horatio or Camillus who has been depicted in 'ancient' equipment, such as would be on display in many temples, festooned as we know many were, with war trophies given as votive offerings. Sumner's identification of his armour as lorica segmentata is also tentative and has been disputed by a number of people. The cloak, by the way, is red. 
 
Crispvs Edited by: <A HREF=http://p200.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=crispvs>Crispvs</A> at: 2/1/05 3:08 am

FlaviusCrispus · 02-01-2005, 02:48 AM

Here's an image of the Domus Aureus "Praetorian": 
 
<img src="http://www.legionsix.org/Praetorianofsmall.jpg" style="border:0;"/> 
 
Graham Sumner and others see a soldier wearing a gilded lorica segmentata here; I'm not sure I agree. I tend toward the "Achilles or some other hero in Hellenistic panoply" theory. 
 
T. Flavius Crispus 
Leg VI VPF 
Edited by: <A HREF=http://p200.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=flaviuscrispus@romanarmytalk>FlaviusCrispus</A> <IMG HEIGHT=10 WIDTH=10 SRC="http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/legiovi/vwp?.dir=/Flavius+photo&.src=gr&.dnm=flavhead2.jpg" BORDER=0> at: 2/1/05 4:05 am

02-02-2005, 04:03 PM

Not sure I am ok with the tunic colour being linked to sctum colour. If that was the case, why aren't there white/off white scuta? Magnus/Matt 
Legio XXX "Ulpia Victrix" 
Niagara Falls, Canada

Marcus Mummius · 02-02-2005, 04:23 PM

Because soldiers on the battlefield did not wear...*swallows his tongue*

02-03-2005, 07:22 PM

LOL Magnus/Matt 
Legio XXX "Ulpia Victrix" 
Niagara Falls, Canada

Tarbicus · 02-03-2005, 10:42 PM

..........WHITE?

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