Museum of Color

Stephanie Krzywonos takes us on a fascinating tour of color throughout history, telling the origin stories of colored pigments such as ochre, Tyrian purple, mummy brown, Prussian blue, and more. But this Emergence Magazine piece is about much more than simply color—in each of her essay’s vignettes, Krzywonos explores stories of extraction, violence, and death.

Cochineal comes in vibrant reddish hues, like scarlet, crimson, carmine, and orange, and is known for its luster and longevity. To make cochineal pigment, brush plump, wingless females that have just made a waxy cocoon into bags and kill them by immersion in scalding water; exposure to steam, sunlight, or the heat of an oven; or rolling them on a wooden board without popping. If needed, leave their bodies to dry in the sun, then pulverize the dead bugs, and combine the powder with liquid. Seventy thousand female nocheztli make one pound of cochineal; harvesting the insects is tedious.

Marketers don’t want so much to capture the shriek of animals who give products their hue, but rather to capture the attention and appetites of consumers. Red insect pigment, also known as E-120 or Natural Red 4, is still used to color drinks, food, and makeup, especially those branded as having “natural ingredients.” In 2012, Starbucks stopped using cochineal in drinks such as its Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino after consumers protested.