Abstract
Since antiquity, organic blues processed from various plants have been used to dye cloth; made into a dye pigment for creating a paint source, and historically used as flowers in funerary garlands in ancient civilizations. One such plant is the small cornflower (Centaurea cyaneus) which has been documented in many medieval technical manuals for suggesting making a blue-coloured glaze and paint. This paper demonstrates an alternative perspective for processing the cornflower’s blue petals to produce a convincing imitation gold colourant when applied over silver leaf. This research will explore the effectiveness of hidden colours buried within historical recipes, showing alternative outcomes compared with the original medieval concepts and transcripts. The theory, through material practice, concludes with solid experimental evidence to support the idea of using blue cornflower juice as a gold substitute rather than using this colourant as a blue dye source.