{"id":124885,"date":"2018-05-02T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2018-05-02T13:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=124885"},"modified":"2018-05-02T11:19:54","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T15:19:54","slug":"scheeles-green-the-color-of-fake-foliage-and-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/02\/scheeles-green-the-color-of-fake-foliage-and-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Scheele\u2019s Green, the Color of Fake Foliage and Death"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Spray of artificial flowers, 1898\u20131935.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

According to folklore, one of the nineteen riddles the queen of Sheba posed to Solomon<\/a> had to do with flowers. The queen brought garlands of cloth flowers or bouquets of wax blossoms\u2014stories differ\u2014and asked Solomon to pick the true flower hidden among the faux. Solomon couldn\u2019t do it by sight alone (they were good fakes), and so he asked the queen whether he could throw open the windows and let some fresh air into the palace\u2014to help him think, he said. As though he had been invited, a fat, drowsy pollinator came inside, and he was pulled, by instinct and hunger, to the true flower. And where the bee flew, so did Solomon\u2019s finger point. \u201cThat one,\u201d he told her. \u201cThat one is the real flower. The rest are facsimiles.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story isn\u2019t in the Bible, though the Old Testament does allude to the episode. There\u2019s a moral here (something about every animal having something to contribute<\/a>), but I\u2019m not interested in morals. Like the queen of Sheba herself, I\u2019m interested in fake flowers and their equally fake foliage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Two Riddles of the Queen of Sheba<\/em>, c. 1500.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been creating dupes for our favorite blooms for as long as we\u2019ve been making art. Beauty, asserts the critic and philosopher Elaine Scarry, \u201cbrings copies of itself into being.\u201d As soon as people awoke to the beauty of nature, they began to copy it, carving breasts into rocks and crafting cloth into petals. But the darkest chapter in the pantheon of flower making occurred ages after Sheba attempted to stump Solomon and centuries after ancient Chinese artists began creating lotus blossoms from silk scraps. Our scene opens in a Paris workshop. It was the year 1859, and Dr. Ange-Gabriel-Maxime Vernois had come to visit this poorly lit space. He walked among the tables, stopping here and there to examine the hands of the ateliers. Under their chewed-down, yellowed nails, around their ragged cuticles, up their sore-laden arms, and in the creases of their elbows he found caked the same brilliant green dust. It was arsenic-laced dye, emerald-hued and blisteringly poisonous.<\/p>\n

These flower makers were being slowly destroyed from the outside in by their contact with Scheele\u2019s green. One London flower maker, a nineteen-year-old girl named Matilda Scheurer, died on November 20, 1861, just a few years after Dr. Vernois made the rounds in Paris. Her death was widely publicized, and accounts of her illness ranged from credible to lurid. Yet we know that her final illness was \u201chorrible,\u201d writes the historian Alison Matthews David<\/a>. \u201cShe vomited green waters; the whites of her eyes had turned green, and she told her doctor that \u2018everything she looked at was green.\u2019\u2009\u201d An autopsy confirmed that arsenic had reached her stomach, liver, and lungs\u2014arsenic she inhaled while at work, dusting artificial leaves with green powder to make them appear more lifelike.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Making artificial flowers, New York, 1912.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Invented in 1775 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, the artificial colorant was made through a process of heating sodium carbonate, adding arsenious oxide, stirring until the mixture was dissolved, and then adding a copper sulfate to the final solution. According to the color historian Victoria Finlay, Scheele invented this green \u201calmost accidentally.\u201d It wasn\u2019t his first trip around the color wheel either; in the 1770s, Scheele created a bright-yellow paint from chlorine and oxygen that was later named Turner\u2019s patent yellow after the British manufacturer who stole the patent. I can only assume Scheele was thrilled to have discovered yet another bright hue (one that he could name after himself, no less), but \u201cthere was something that troubled him,\u201d Finlay writes. A year before the color went into production, he wrote to a friend that he thought users might want to know about its poisonous nature. \u201cBut what\u2019s a little arsenic when you\u2019ve got a great new color to sell?\u201d Finlay quips.<\/p>\n

Despite its character flaws, Scheele\u2019s green was striking and profitable. The color was not only cheap to produce, it accurately mimicked the hues found in nature. It wasn\u2019t too yellow, nor was it too teal. It was a middle green with full saturation\u2014no gray tints, no underlying hint of brown. It was a vegetal green, the color of fiddleheads and ivy vines. It was a garden color, and for city dwellers, the allure of Scheele\u2019s green was impossible to resist (even though the Victorians were well aware of the toxic effects of ingesting arsenic). This was a time when Londoners and Parisians alike were concerned with the dandification of modern society. The Industrial Revolution had turned their streets ugly and gray with smog. It had also (supposedly) turned their men into simpering weenies who didn\u2019t do God\u2019s honest work, like toiling in the fields, but instead hung out around bars and smoked and worked white-collar positions. Some Victorians (those with the most selective memories or a rather tenuous grasp of recent history) longed to return to that fabled pastoral Eden where men were men and women wore wreaths of fragrant flowers. And since fresh flowers didn\u2019t last long enough for multiple wears, cloth reproductions would have to do. (Unsurprisingly, this was also a time when the English\u2014and their counterparts in Europe\u2014became very<\/em> interested in protecting green spaces within the urban landscapes. Many of London\u2019s finest public gardens date back to this era.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Two skeletons dressed as lady and gentleman in \u201cThe Arsenic Waltz.\u201d Etching, 1862. Image courtesy of the Wellcome Library, London.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Scheele\u2019s green also made its way onto human bodies in the form of dresses, waistcoats, shoes, gloves, and trousers. Empress Eugenie, the most notable it girl of her time, adored green\u2014she thought it brought out the gold in her hair, and even if this wasn\u2019t true, the gold dust she sprinkled on her hairline certainly helped. (The empress was also partial to green jewels; she owned several Colombian emerald necklaces<\/a> as well as an amazingly extra emerald-and-diamond headpiece, which is known around the auction circuit as the Donnersmarck tiara<\/a>.) Typically, those who wore green were cursed only with a rash or some irritation, maybe the occasional oozing sore, if that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Accidents caused by the use of green arsenic, 1859.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Green wallpaper was also wildly popular at the time, and as the Romantic movement began to gain steam, it became even more fashionable to deck your parlor or drawing room in scenes of stylized strawberry vines and blowsy-headed green tulips. The designer-artist-poet-activist-novelist William Morris (an earlier adopter of the multihyphenate lifestyle and one of the major figures of the British Arts and Crafts Movement) was highly skeptical of claims that arsenic could be dangerous. But as the heir to a copper mine (which produced arsenic dust as a byproduct of mining activity), he would be. When doctors told him that the miners were suffering from arsenic poisoning, he retorted that they \u201cwere bitten by witch fever\u201d (i.e., were total quacks). This was slightly ironic because Morris actively campaigned for safer working conditions for textile manufacturers, and he felt strongly about using organic dyes, including cochineal, kermes, and rose madder. Yet unlike those sweet rosy hues, there wasn\u2019t an organic dye that could replace the vivid appeal of copper-based greens, and so he continued to use both Scheele\u2019s green and Paris green (a similar shade that was more lightfast) in his hugely popular line of wall coverings, rugs, and textiles.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Morris & Co.\u2019s Daisy wallpaper, 1864.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Around 1870, Morris bowed to public pressure and began using arsenic-free greens in his workshops. \u201c[Morris] thought because no one was ill in his house from the arsenic wallpaper, it must be something else that was causing the sickness,\u201d the art historian Lucinda Hawksley said in an interview about her book Bitten by Witch Fever<\/em>. That no one was sick seems extraordinary, but then again, many people had green wallpaper and survived. Napoleon was famously believed to have been poisoned by his wallpaper, though modern X-ray analysis has found<\/a> that there was \u201cenough arsenic present capable of causing illness but probably not death.\u201d Still, arsenic was everywhere. Bakers used arsenic green as food coloring, and some restaurants even added it to their drinks. In 1858, in the deadly Bradford sweets poisoning<\/a>, twenty-one people perished from arsenic-laced hard candies sold by a local character known as Humbug Billy. Ten years later, UK legislators finally set limits on the acceptable amount of arsenic in food. Although there were shades of blue and yellow made through a similar process that also included arsenic, those dyes didn\u2019t get quite the same bad rap as Scheele\u2019s green or Paris green. \u201cGreen was a color that was always seen as the culprit, simply because it was so desirable at the time,\u201d Hawksley said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u201cThe Great Lozenge-Maker,\u201d John Leech, 1858.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

By the time European, British, and American governments got around to regulating arsenic, the vivid green wallpaper had already fallen out of fashion. Just as avocado green was the<\/em> green of 1970s America, Scheele\u2019s green feels like a relic of Romanticism. And while women continued to wear flowers on their hats, the flower-making industry never quite recovered. Not only did the demand for fake flowers fall off, but reforms of the twentieth\u00a0century made it more difficult for flower makers to turn a profit. (Many of them relied on child labor to curl the petals, sew the flowers, and do other tasks that required small dexterous hands.) In 2016, the Museum of London introduced an exhibit titled \u201cThe Lost Art of Flower-Making<\/a>.\u201d In a promotional interview for the show, one of the exhibit\u2019s curators, Natasha Fenner, said that following World War I, women\u2019s clothing became \u201cmuch more streamlined\u201d and the \u201celaborate decorations of the late Victorian period were seen as fussy and old-fashioned.\u201d What was once a booming industry shrunk to a niche market. The last major flower maker of London was David Bloor<\/a>, who was forced out of business after cheap foreign products began to flood the market.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Embroidery Woman<\/em>,\u00a0Georg Friedrich Kersting, 1817.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Like lead-laced whites and diarrhea-causing yellows<\/a>, Scheele\u2019s green is no longer a chromatic necessity; we have safer green to use (though not by much; more on that later). Yet the story of Scheele\u2019s green has captivated writers throughout the decades. It feels emblematic of our worst consumerist tendencies\u2014our desire to hop on board with whatever trend floats our way, even when we know it\u2019s problematic<\/a>, and our willingness to turn a blind eye to suffering, to focus instead on the beautiful object set before us<\/a>. Our willingness to kill ourselves to replicate nature, rather than simply engaging with it.<\/p>\n

So much has changed, and so little has changed. Flower makers have been replaced by Foxconn employees, working every day so that wealthy nations can have their expensive toys. Silk flowers are no longer considered stylish; paper flowers have stolen the crown for twenty-first-century status bloom. Women still wear flowers in their hair, but now they do it for music festivals, a space where reality is momentarily suspended and the regular rules of polite society don\u2019t really apply. Beauty inspires us to replicate, but it also inspires a willful ignorance.<\/p>\n

Green is still a complicated color. Pantone chose Greenery as 2017\u2019s color of the year, and it was reported that the decision was intended to help sway the public towards embracing more eco-friendly trends and policies<\/a>, an idea that I find every bit as ludicrous as the reasoning behind picking Ultra Violet for 2018<\/a>. (Political divisions will not be healed by more purple clothing.) Greenwashing is useless for so many reasons. Commercial greens are often made with pigment green 7, which contains chlorine and can\u2019t be recycled or composted safely. Pigment green 36 also contains chlorine, as well as bromide atoms, and inorganic pigment green 50 is \u201ca noxious cocktail of cobalt, titanium, nickel, and zinc oxide,\u201d writes the design expert Alice Rawsthorne<\/a> in a 2010 article for the\u00a0New York Times. <\/em>\u201cIronic, isn\u2019t it?\u201d the German chemist Michael Braungart adds. \u201cThe color green can never be green, because of the way it is made. It\u2019s impossible to dye plastic green or to print green ink on paper without contaminating them.\u201d Green has become greener, fake flowers have become ever more convincing, but our unquenchable thirst for the false purity of an aesthetic Eden remains.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read more in our Hue\u2019s Hue series<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Katy Kelleher is a writer who lives in the woods of rural New England. She is the author of\u00a0<\/em>Handcrafted Maine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  According to folklore, one of the nineteen riddles the queen of Sheba posed to Solomon had to do with flowers. The queen brought garlands of cloth flowers or bouquets of wax blossoms\u2014stories differ\u2014and asked Solomon to pick the true flower hidden among the faux. Solomon couldn\u2019t do it by sight alone (they were good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1397,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32911],"tags":[27781,33918,33919,33921,33920,3657,8514,33917,12817],"class_list":["post-124885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hues-hue","tag-arsenic","tag-artificial-flowers","tag-british-arts-and-crafts-movement","tag-carl-wilhelm-scheele","tag-empress-eugenie","tag-napoleon","tag-pantone","tag-scheeles-green","tag-william-morris"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nScheele\u2019s Green, the Color of Fake Foliage and Death<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Scheele\u2019s green was an arsenic-laced dye, emerald-hued and blisteringly poisonous. Those who wore the hue were cursed with a rash or the occasional oozing sore. 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