Crimson & Indigo & Magenta

Crimson is the Inca textile — the deep vivid crimson of the most culturally prestigious Andean weave. Inca textiles: the Inca textile tradition (the most immediately technically sophisticated and the most comprehensively culturally valued of all the Pre-Columbian American textile traditions — the most specifically status-communicating artifact type in the entire Inca imperial system — more immediately valuable than gold or silver in the Inca value system) was the most comprehensively state-controlled and the most immediately redistributively organized textile production system in the Americas. The cumbi cloth: the most prestigious and the most immediately status-marking of all the Inca textiles — the cumbi — the most finely woven and the most specifically imperial-level quality cloth — woven exclusively in the most important imperial workshops — the aqllawasi — by the most specifically selected and the most carefully trained female weavers — the aqllakuna — the most literally 'chosen women' — selected at approximately age 10 from the most beautiful, the most skilled, and the most specifically appropriate girls throughout the Inca empire — trained for 4 years in the most important textile, brewing, and ceremonial skills before being assigned to the most appropriate imperial service. The crimson in Andean textiles: the most immediately vivid and the most specifically status-marking of all the Inca textile colors was the most vivid crimson — produced from the most important Andean dye plant: the tara — Caesalpinia spinosa — whose most specifically crimson-producing tannins were the most immediately available and the most comprehensively used of the high-altitude Andean botanical dye materials. Indigo is the Andean night sky — the very deep indigo of the most star-dense Cusco altitude atmosphere. High-altitude astronomy: at the 3,400 meters altitude of Cusco (the most immediately famous and the most comprehensively historically important city in South America — the ancient capital of the Tawantinsuyu — the Inca Empire — the most immediately impressive and the most comprehensively architecturally specific Pre-Columbian city in the Americas — a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983) the Andean night sky is simultaneously the most completely atmosphere-transparent and the most immediately star-dense of any inhabited city-level altitude in the Americas. The Ceque system: the Inca astronomical tradition (the most immediately comprehensive and the most specifically practical of all the Pre-Columbian astronomical knowledge systems — incorporating the most detailed observation of the most important astronomical bodies: the Sun, Moon, Pleiades, Milky Way — the Mayu — the Celestial River — and the most specifically dark constellation system unique to the Inca: the Pachatira — the 'dark cloud' constellations formed from the most dense dust clouds of the Milky Way rather than from the most bright stars — the most immediately original and the most comprehensively specific astronomical tradition of any Pre-Columbian civilization). Magenta is the cochineal dye — the pure vivid electric magenta of the most historically important New World colorant. Cochineal: the cochineal dye (from Spanish: cochinilla — the dried female body of the Dactylopius coccus scale insect — parasitic on the most specific Opuntia cactus species of the Mesoamerican and Andean region — the most immediately economically important and the most comprehensively historically significant of all the New World dye materials — the second most important Spanish colonial American export commodity after silver — contributing to the most dramatic transformation of European textile and art coloration from approximately the 1520s through the 19th century) produces the most immediately pure and the most comprehensively electrically vivid magenta-to-scarlet dye color of any known natural dye material — the specific pure vivid electric magenta of the most concentrated and the most precisely alum-mordanted cochineal dyebath on the most carefully prepared woolen fibre being the most immediately beautiful and the most comprehensively saturated natural dye color in the entire global textile dye tradition.