FLORENTINE BROWN

Otherwise known as roman brown and Hatchett's brown, it is a copper color related to Paris blue, and is therefore impermanent. It is found in reddish-brown madder lake, such as Van Dyck red, and is poisonous.

FOLIUM & ARCHIL

Colors obtainable from Turnsole corresponded fairly well with the range of the ancient purple. That may conceivably be the reason why turnsole colors were sometimes called folium: that they resembled the purple of the manuscript folia. Archil, a dye made from a lichen, also had importance in medieval painting. We used to call it orchil, being derived from oricella, from the Latin name roccella, which botanists still apply to the lichen itself, Roccella tinctoria. A pigment was sometimes made from it; but its chief importance was as a dye, and perhaps its chief interest for the study of medieval art is that a Florentine family, well known as patrons of art, who are said to have made their fortune in dyeing wool with oricella, were known as the Oricellai, the dyers with archil, or in more familiar form, the Ruccellai.

FULLER'S EARTH

A form of Silicate of Alumina (clay) which is capable of absorbing coloring matter in oils. In the preparation of refined Linseed oil, an ounce of Fuller's earth wtih a pint of oil is shaken and then placed in the sun. It produces a clear, well-settled oil. As a pigment, there is less information documented even though there is proof that it was used for paint as well. Particularly in India where a form of this clay is used to make a bluish paint that is part of the Hindu wedding ceremony.

Fullers Earth is also the international ingredient name for a variety of different clays, including Multani Mitti from India. In it's natural and unrefined state, this is the clay that has been used to clean the outer surface of the Taj Mahal.

FUSTIC

From the wood of the Rhus cotinus, which in fifteenth century Italy at least had some importance in yellow lake-making as well as dyeing. Lily pollen and the bark of walnut-trees have been mentioned incidentally as well. An apple tree bark yellow was known in fifteenth century Germany, and there are still other minor yellows which need not be dealt with. The great medieval yellows, apart from gold, are orpiment and ochre, giallorino (probably usually massicot), mosaic gold, saffron, buckthorn, and weld.