30 May 2025 / 10 House
‘Red as cactus blood’
In the British Museum is a 16th century manuscript that shows how important cochineal dye was to the Spanish Empire: it was second only to silver...
It made the Spanish super-rich and they kept its source a secret for centuries: they pretended it was a dried cereal grain. They sold it to the very richest people in Europe. Officers in the English army wore their ‘Redcoats’ proudly...
The Spanish conquerors were amazed to see such a bright red colour in Aztec costumes, art, face-painting - and on sale in pressed bars in Aztec markets. Nothing like it existed in Europe! Moctezuma ordered many bags of it every year as tribute from his lands to the south and east.
Cochineal comes from squashed female bugs that live in the prickly-pear cactus in Mexico. They’re tiny, and around 70,000 of them were needed to make a pound of red dye!
The Aztec word for cochineal was nocheztli from two words: nochtli (cactus) and eztli (blood). The Aztecs themselves called it ‘the chilli-red colourer’.