Purple was expensive, because purple dye came from snails. The video above, by CreatureCast, recounts the story of Rome’s vaunted Tyrian purple, and the color’s close link with the marine ...

The purple dye was made by squeezing the gland of a sea snail (Bolinus brandaris, to be precise) which produced a single drop of liquid — an evolutionary defense mechanism that, apparently ...

Created from the desiccated glands of sea snails, the colour purple has nevertheless come to define royalty. Kelly Grovier looks at how the hue shook off its unexpected source. Purple is a paradox ...

He explains that Tyrian purple is totally unlike other dyes, where the raw material – such as leaves – contains the pigment already. Instead, the sea snail mucous contains chemicals which can ...

The seafaring Phoenicians controlled the Mediterranean market for a vibrant purple dye crafted from humble sea snails and craved by powerful kings. A horse-head prow looks ahead as a modern ...

It takes 120 pounds of snails to make just one gram of pure purple dye powder, in a labour-intensive process mastered by the Phoenicians, who produced it in commercial quantities to trade across ...

The beautiful purple shell of the violet sea snail (Janthina janthina) is only part of what makes this gastropod so interesting. Otherwise known as the bubble-raft snail, the critter collects ...

On an island in Greece, researchers have discovered a 3,600-year-old workshop that once turned out a rare purple dye coveted by royalty—and made from snail glands. Archaeologists were excavating ...

TUNIS, Feb 8 (Reuters) - A Tunisian history enthusiast is making dye from sea snail shells inspired by a school project decades ago on ancient Carthage and the purple colouring that brought ...

Because each snail yielded little more than a drop of the discharge — a clear, malodorous liquid — some 250,000 were required to produce an ounce of dye, by some accounts. Purple was labor ...