Trying to crack the secrets of Maya Blue! Part 1 

The clay doesn’t need to be purified-assuming you purchased it & it’s homogeneous-and there was plenty of indigotin in your extract. You’d have gotten a lovely saturated color if you’d dried & re-ground your pigment before heating-give it another go that way! (The stovetop method is also foolproof & more fun to watch than the oven. Just use your mortar & pestle to combine the dry clay w/the indigo-there is no benefit to wetting it anyway.)

Tribes?! the Mayans were a whole culture 🤔

Personally, I would be inclined toward the clay being the problem. I can't wait to see more.

there's an article by natalie stopka which claims to just heat the woad and the clay together without adding water and just stir it around. she says in the article that she uses 10-20 parts clay and 1 part indigo. she also suggests putting it on low heat. you should check it out

Looks like there are actually several different mineral types of palygorskite clay and probably one containing zinc(tends to put off a greenish blue color) would maybe give you more of the turquoise tint? Anyhow I'm going to try it that way, thanks for sharing this with us.

Can’t you buy indigo powder to simplify the extraction process…

There is a YT video by Field Museum that talks about a Copal resin being fused with the indigo/clay under heat. Perhaps a yellow portion of the resin tends the resulting product more to turquoise? I wondered if the orangish impurity in some clay portions might actually tweak the colour more to the green blue until I saw the vid. Apparently the 'Copal' was used in incense by the Mayans along with the indigo. I understand Copal can sometimes be a generic term as Kauri gum used to be sold as that sometimes, more as a flooring/furniture varnish in the 19th century.

I know a lot of people mentioned Natalie Stopka but its a great way of making Maya Blue. We know that historically the pigment was heated (some sources say as part of ritual, I'm not totally educated in Maya work). But heating the pigment is important and what makes it so incredibly lightfast! The indigo sublimates and gets trapped in the clay. The article by Natalie Stopka is great and what I followed to make my own Maya blue. I love your videos and they helped me learn so much while researching Mesoamerican pigments :) I'm excited to see more, its such a beautiful color.

try the calcination while your indigo and the clay are dry, then start stirring while you apply the heat, you'll see when the magic begins.

Maya Blue is not "vibrant" (I have Daniel Smith samples). It's very much like normal Indigo, same dull, blackish, greenish. The big deal is that it somehow becomes magnitudes more lightfast. Still only ASTFM II. Claims of ASTFM I don't seem to hold up. But Indigo is IV, so a vast improvement on pure Indigo. I do believe the Palygorskite clay quality is very important though. Because what happens is that the indigo molecules goes into a new hybrid organic-nonorganic complex that is much more stable than the organic compound. Attapulgite is not quite Palygorskite. It's mostly Bentonite which have a completely different crystal form and is probably useless for making Maya Blue. But put samples out into the sun, and we'll see if it's Maya Blue or just clay colored with Indigo. I don't think we can judge it by the color.

Hello, thanks for your videos! I just started trying around with the Maya Blue. I used a mix of Multani Mitti clay (Fullers Earth) and Kaolin, about 1:1. About half a teaspoon of each. One pinch of Indigo. I only had the synthetic pigment. After mixing it with water and grinding it in the mortar I put it in the oven at 175 degrees Celsius. After 10 min. the color already had changed to a kind of Prussian Blue/dark turqoise. Different from the original clay mix and different from the pure indigo. I have no idea if the product has anything to do with Maya Blue, but it looks like a real blue pigment. Don`tknow if this helps. Can send pictures. The mortar is still in the oven at the moment. I have to see if the color keeps changing.

Great experiments - thank you for sharing! I come from a ceramics area of knowledge and the clay will very much be the problem... I would find your local potters society/group as many of the ingredients mentioned are common in a pottery studio. A more pure clay would be china clay/kaolin - the particles of clay are very very fine and 'bloat' (absorb much more water than the weight of matter would normally absorb. To fully bloat it needs to be wet for at least 24 hours. The other thought I have is that the purity of the clay (which wouldnt have been common pre industrial era) is the problem... maybe try bentonite which bloats similar to kaolin but has iron, manganese etc. Manganese being a strong oxidiser may yeild different results... You are right to take care of dust injury but also take care when heating clays as you will produce different compounds, even at relatively (to kiln firing), temperatures. I can't wait to see the next experiments! Keep in mind that Edison never failed to make a lightbulb, he discovered thousands of ways not to make one too!

I'm also curious as to how nailpolish companies acheive putting both glitter AND seemingly opaque colourants in their nailpolish. Does this also make use of transparency?

EđHey there! I've been looking so long for something/someone that/who can teach me how to make colourshifting/chameleon/multichrome watercolour paint from scratch. I know you can get pigment powders and use Gum Arabic, and grind them together with a block and a pane of glass, but I want to know how the pigment powder is made. I do have a guess I will share at the end here, but I am probably way off as if it were this easy, everyone would be doing it. Now I know that in order to get shimmer and pearlescent/iridescent/metallic paints, you generally use mica. But is it as easy as just grinding it and adding the fixative like you would with the prepackaged powder? Or do you have to process the mica further? How do you get the mica to be different colours to shift between? My hypothosis on how it's done/idea: 1. Break the mica into as fine a powder as you possibly can, until it's a fine powder. 2. Add aome kind of dye, stir it in thoroughly until uniform colour, and leave to dry before moving on to next level and ultimately before next step. I'm not sure what would stick, perhaps alcohol based? 3. Mix three or more colours together. 4. Cross your fingers. Toes, nostrils if you can, that this is going to work? Clearly, I'm an amature. I feel like I know for sure there's an element of the recipe here that requires the use of translucency, but I feel likey method is not only too simple, it's likely flat out wrong. If you could figure it out and let me know, that would be absolutely AMAZING!? THANK YOU again for your time.

How did you decide on the firing temp and method? Earthenware firing temps are typically higher, 190 is like bisque temp or to calcine/sinter a material. Also, to my understanding, ceramics are glaze fired when bone dry or after bisqued, not as a wet paste or covered. It’s easier to get an even temp throughout the piece if it is of even thickness, like a slab or test tile.

I just found your channel and hope you come back with new videos, please.

I actually like watching trial and error. Seeing the mental process someone would take is very enlightening to me!!

Very interesting process to watch! My gut tells me you’re right about the clay, I’m interested to see if you’ve made any developments with purifying it. If I can find the clay I’d love to give maya a shot too, have some good indigo here. Also very excited to see the progress with the woad balls!!

Love your vids. Hope you have more success in the future, but I love seeing the failures, too.

This is one of my dream projects! So happy you're doing this pigment next

I would research the different types of clay in that the Mayans would use and see witch one has more of a certain properties.

11:22 What is that liquid

You need Guatemalan indigo and palygorskite clay specifically from the Yucatan region( because of the trace minerals contained there) to make the perfect mayan blue.

where is part 2?

Here is a question--have you tried to mix the clay with the indego extract before allowing it to oxidise and become blue? The smectite clays have a high ion exchange capacity which allows them to adsorbed organic materials and sequester them between the clay layers; thus protecting them from external attack. This is such a profound effect that it allows potters to use organic paints on ceramics before firing, and the finished, fully fired vessel will retain a black carbon coloration (look up salado polychrome pottery from the Southwest USA; there is a youtube channel titled "Andy Ward's Ancient Pottery which demonstrates the technique). It also allows these clays to act as nutrient reserves in soil ecosystems, and gives them a use in medicine removing toxins from the stomach in much the same way that activated charcoal does. I am wondering if you might get better retention of the blue color if you mixed the clay into the still-green extract, allow it to sit and absorb as much as it wants, then settle/filter out the clay particles, and lastly dry and bake it. You might need to dilute the final product to see its true color, but this would be an interesting variation on the theme and would be a worthy experiment! I don't have experience with this specific process, but I am a chemist and botanist, and think that this variation on your methods would make better use of the materials' inherent properties. Have a blessed day, Adam.

But neither woad or indica plant are native to meso America?

When I was a kid we were told Maya blue was made with a clay the mayans got from the state of George, USA. We were also told there was great exploration between the people of the ancient world and that humanity came out of eruasia not Africa. Which changed after the Civil rights movement. We also were told around the 80s that true Maya blue couldn't be made anymore because the clay the mayans and Egyptians used to make it no longer exists. That clay was all dug out of Georgia. Wonder why is all changed now.

You mentioned absorbing the precursor into the clay and then oxidizing it, and that is an experiment that I would like to see.

Thanks for sharing I wondered how this pigment was achieved. Looks like its heading in the the general direction, if I compare it to my sample of Maya Blue it appears to be very pale. Maybe triple the amount of indigo to 0.6g ?

wow that's a lot of work .

Yes just grind them together and heat on the stovetop!

Thank you!