Vintage Tech: Tyrian Purple

It’s sometimes easy to forget that our technologically complex world wasn’t created out of whole cloth. Or that it wasn’t always here. Without an awareness of the past, “the sense of time falls in upon itself,” writes Lewis Lapham, “collapsing like an accordion into the evangelical present.”

“Vintage Tech,” a column by B. Alexandra Szerlip, will examine some of the under-the-radar stories, personalities and techniques that inform our 21st century lives.

Today is Habacuc Avedano’s 78th birthday. Seated in the dirt courtyard that separates his two-story cinderblock home from the outdoor, wood-burning kitchen, he recalls the first time his uncle introduced him to caracol purpura. Habacuc was fifteen. It was the start of his apprenticeship as a tintorero.

In 1956, getting from Pinotepa de Don Luis to the small fishing village of Puerto Angel, on Oaxaca’s southernmost coast, required an eight-day walk, crossing the occasional river by canoe, and stepping over miles of remote, rocky coastline. The harvesting trips, which always took place during the dry season to allow for camping out, lasted two to three months. Habacuc, his uncle and several other locals carried as many tortillas, and as much beans and coffee, as they could manage, along with large skeins of native cotton thread hand-spun on drop spindles by their wives, daughters and neighbors.

“When the food ran out, we hired ourselves out as local day laborers, bought more supplies with the money we saved, then returned to our own work.”

Murex purpura snails live in secluded coves in intertidal zones along the Pacific shoreline, wedged between large, craggy boulders. Barefoot, carrying thread skeins and a wooden prying stick (less invasive than metal), young Habacuc learned how to balance himself against crashing waves and the occasional swooping heron. There was only a three-hour “window” each day, when the tide was low, but even then, the work was dangerous. Over the centuries, the sea had claimed many a Mixtec “snailer” who didn’t know enough about currents or weather, wasn’t sure-footed enough, or was simply unlucky. Given the harsh remoteness of the area, a broken leg or ankle was something to be dreaded. “You have to hang on for dear life. Those that died, we buried them there.”

A rooster, strutting and crowing at Don Habacuc’s feet, momentarily interrupts his story.

He learned how to loosen a mollusk’s tenacious grip, then press on the exposed belly with his thumb. After urinating in defense against the intrusion, snails release a milky, garlic-y scum that, pressed onto the cotton thread, changes, within minutes when exposed to bright sunlight, from yellow to green to blue, and finally to vibrant purple.

A miraculously colorfast purple that requires no mordant...