Cornelis Drebbel Discovers the Perfect Red, c. 1606

JLM Morton

You were tired 
and you let the flask slip 

from preoccupied hands, 
glass shattering  

on the tin windowsill 
- an alchemist’s  

amber plume - aqua regia 
unmastered.  

You had meant 
to measure temperature. 

Instead, you changed 
the world by accident,  

an obsession found 
in the unforeseen, 

the spill of perfect red 
a sacrament.  

Stroudwater scarlet. 
Cochineal dazzler. 

Stoked the riot of hunger 
for a colour –

cloth for colonists 
and cavaliers, 

capital for the trade 
of pioneers.

Redcoats plundered 
a material bond. 

Venturing into a bright 
red beyond

The Science

This poem is inspired by Cornelis Drebbel, a Dutch engineer and inventor. It is said that while making a coloured liquid for a thermometer Drebbel dropped a flask of aqua regia (a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid) on a tin windowsill and discovered that stannous chloride makes the colour of carmine much brighter and more durable. His daughters Anna and Catharina and his sons-in-law Abraham and Johannes Sibertus Kuffler set up a very successful dye works, including one established in 1643 in Bow, London, and the resulting colour was called bow dye. The recipe for ‘colour Kufflerianus’ was kept a family secret, and the new bright red colour was very popular in Europe. The scarlet dye was used to dye the cloth that was used to clothe the redcoats who patrolled and enforced the territories of the British Empire.

The Poet

JLM Morton is a writer and poet whose work explores rural identity and belonging, ancestry, place and practices of care, repair, and solidarity across human and other-than-human worlds. Winner of the Laurie Lee, Geoffrey Dearmer and International Dylan Thomas Day prizes, her work is published widely including in The Poetry Review, The Rialto and most recently in Living With Water (MUP, 2023). Her first full poetry collection Red Handed is forthcoming with Broken Sleep Books (2024).

Next poem: Crayon Box Favorite by Meg Freer