non sine sole iris

softbank applegreen

Porphyrogennetos

...touch through the colour

Porphýra, the Purple Chamber, a pavilion of the Great Palace of Constantinople): no child born anywhere else could legitimately be called Porphyrogénnētos. This pavilion was a free-standing building in the Great Palace complex in Constantinople. As the Porphyrogennētē Anna Komnena described it, the room rested on one of the Palace's many terraces, overlooking the Sea of Marmora and the Bosphorus Strait, "where the stone oxen and the lions stand" (i.e. the Boukoleon Palace), and was in the form of a perfect square from floor to ceiling, with the latter ending in a pyramid. Its walls, floor and ceiling were completely veneered with imperial porphyry, which was "generally of a purple colour throughout, but with white spots like sand sprinkled over it

//www.ancient-egypt.co.uk/people/Imperial%20Porphyry;%20its%20special%20qualities%20which%20influenced%20its%20form,%20function%20and%20use%20in%20antiquity.pdfThe 


mud-purple feeds on rotting slime and the seaweed-purple on seaweed, both being of a very common quality. A better kind is the reef-purple, collected on the reefs of the sea, though this also is lighter and softer as well. The pebble-purple is named after a pebble in the sea, and is remarkably suitable for purple dyes; and far the best for these is the melting-purple, that is, one fed on a varying kind of mud. Purples are taken in a sort of little lobster-pot of fine ply thrown into deep water. These contain bait, cockles that close with a snap, as we observe that mussels do. These when half-killed but put back into the sea gape greedily as they revive and attract the purples, which go for them with outstretched tongues. But the cockles when pricked by their spike shut up and nip the creatures nibbling them. So the purples hang suspended because of their greed and are lifted out of the water.

natural history IX

oxacan purpura dyeing - milking the shellfish

The official fasces and axes of Rome clear a path, and it also marks the honourable estate of boyhood; it distinguishes the senate from the knighthood, it is called in to secure the favour of the gods; and it adds radiance to every garment, while in a triumphal robe it is blended with gold. Consequently even the mad lust for the purple may be excused; but what is the cause of the prices paid for purple-shells, which have an unhealthy odour when used for dye and a gloomy tinge in their radiance resembling an angry sea?

http://www.masseiana.org/pliny.htm#BOOK%20IX

http://www.kremer-pigmente.com/media/files_public/36010e.pdf 

non sine oleum iris

zwischenspiel

The Palace of Curtains III

where rainbows spangled the gilded air…

The bright sapphires slipped between his fingers and lay on the sequined grass behind him, illuminating his footprints as he entered the dark vaults of the forest.















With a cry Sanders raised his jewelled arm. In the sunlight the faint nodes of the gemstones he had stuffed into his cuff shone in the tissues of his arm like inlaid stars















Then he realised why Thorensen had brought the jewels to the young woman, and why she had seized on them so eagerly. By some optical or electromagnetic freak, the intense focus of light within the stones simultaneously produced a compression of time, so that the discharge of light from the surfaces reversed the processes of crystallization. Perhaps it was this gift of time which accounted for the eternal appeal of precious gems, as well as of all baroque painting and architecture. Their intricate crests and cartouches, occupying more than their own volume of space, so seemed to contain a greater ambient time, providing that unmistakable premonition of immortality sensed within St Peter's or the palace at Nymphenburg.


ballard / the crystal world























Here, wear this jewel for me, 'tis my picture
Twelfth Night / III iv 228

nonsuch / nonpareil

Nonsuch Palace c1560 Joris Hoefnagel

There you are in your beautiful villa, straight out of Disneyland, on a clear blue lake that drains away, while you sit, with a last derisive gurgle…


A dangerous road. Every pitfall, every error, every snare to which Everyman has been liable since the beginning, you are sure to meet on the road to the Western Lands…

Guidebook / magic mirror

Richmond
Henry VII died here. His blood, which he ordered to be sprinkled on the wall, is still to be seen in the room wherein he died. Many old written and printed books are in the Palace. Also a large circular mirror, in which King Henry VII by means of magic saw what was passing everywhere both by sea and land. The secret passages used by this king were first discovered under Queen Elizabeth.

Notes on England / Johann Jacob Grasser / c 1606

Richmond

In the palace, remark the Library of King Henry VII, for the most part consisting of manuscripts, of which Library nothing was known until the time of Queen Elizabeth. One of the books is on magic or the black art, called "Modus et Ratio Divinae Contemplationis". Here also is a large mirror in which Henry VII was able to see what he wished; but this mirror broke in pieces when the King died. His inkstand is likewise here. A portrait of the King when a young man, together with his wife; also the genealogies of all the Kings of England. King Henry VII's chamber wherein he is said to have died, the wall of which is besprinkled with his blood, but this is not permitted to be seen by everyone.

England as seen by foreigners / William Brenchley Rye / Friedrich I Duke of Wittenberg

Nero's emerald
Pliny (NH 37,64 ):
Iidem plerumque concavi, ut visum conligant. quam ob rem decreto hominum iis parcitur scalpi vetitis. quamquam Scythicorum Aegyptiorumque duritia tanta est, ut non queant volnerari. quorum vero corpus extentum est, eadem qua specula ratione supini rerum imagines reddunt. Nero princeps gladiatorum pugnas spectabat in smaragdo.

'Smaragdi' are generally concave in shape, so that they concentrate the vision. Because of these properties, mankind has decreed that 'smaragdi' must be preserved in their natural state and has forbidden them to be engraved. In any case, those of Scythia and Egypt are so hard as to be unaffected by blows. When 'smaragdi' that are tabular in shape are laid flat, they reflect objects just as mirrors do. The emperor Nero used to watch the fights between gladiators in a 'smaragdus'.1

imago amoris

The picture of Venus above which is written
imago amoris the image of love
on the forehead
procul et prope far and near
on the crown
mors et vita death and life
at the feet
hyems at aestas in midwinter in midsummer
and beneath all
in hac poesi figurantur proprietates amoris

insurgency

insurgency coat of arms