Cyanometer

Description

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to measure the color blue?
During your travels or while you wanders taking some fresh air.
Designing your new interior and looking for inspiration.
Sketching in plein-air a new painting and taking notes of the blue colors before going back to the studio/home.
Connecting your blues to some nice poetry or a piece of music and sharing it with someone else.

I made this Cyanometer, printed by hand in the Prussian blue of Cyanotype, inspired by the first instrument that Horace Bénédict de Saussure created in 1789 using Prussian blue paint to be able measure the transparency and colour of the sky. He discovered why the sky changes color. Humboldt used that instrument in his explorations in South America.

Today this poetic and useful tool, printed by hand in Cyanotype on pure cotton paper is for you, to let you measure every day the blueness of the sky, the sea or the soul, with a variety of fifty shades.

From the 5 stars reviews in my Etsy shop: “The Cyanometer is absolutely beautiful in every way, even the packaging. It sits out to be admired with some of my other special vintage art tools. I include the color number on my notes when sketching landscapes; photos often miss the right color of the sky. It has been “very” helpful when returning to my art space to complete my drawing or painting. If you paint it is truly a treasure tool to have.”

I sell my Cyanometer inside its case.
I also sell it with a beautiful wooden Stand, made of sustainable Sapele redwood and waxed by hand, to be displayed on a bookshelf or a furniture. Please visit my other listing inside my shop to see it.

I decided to number all the Cyanometers as unique pieces.
To create a community, based on our daily blue(s) more than on our own profiles, I created a Facebook open group called Explorers of the Blue, where you can share your photos, poetry, music, etc. related with the #cyanometer and the color blue. www.facebook.com/groups/explorersoftheblue Please, join and share!

Using the hashtag #explorersoftheblue in Instagram (and Facebook too) we generate a media library that will connect our blue(s).
You can look for and follow the hashtag #explorersoftheblue in Instagram to see what’s new there.

If you are a graphic designer or interested in colors, I have also published in my website www.saccheri.it a pdf document (draft at this moment) which relates the shades of the Cyanometer to Pantone® solid uncoated codes. The cyanometer is printed on a pure cotton paper, and due to the more limited range of colors contained into Pantone®, a sort of approximate match has to be expected.

I hope you can enjoy all you days and make good use of them together with the cyanometer!

Each item I sell is an original, different from the others, to be collected, signed and numbered at the back.
– Cyanometer dimension: 15 cm diam (6″ ca).
– process: classic cyanotype formula from 1842.
– paper: Arches Platine, 100% cotton, no alkaline reserve, 310g/mq.
– mounted: on recycled pressed cardboard.
– case material: thin wood stamped by hand with pigment color, stitching and closing made with natural cord.
– case dimension: 18×18 cm (7”x7”).
– inner vellum sheet with information about the Cyanometer.
– shipping: package anti humidity/scratch/bending. Certified mail with tracking number.

Cyanotype is a very unique process where the photographic emulsion is prepared with two different iron salts. You need a black and white negative as large as the image to contact-print a photograph. The emulsion is UV sensitive (like with many other alternative photographic processes) so the exposure can be made with the help of the sun. Developing a cyanotype is very eco-friendly because you need only water, no chemical developer or fixer is used in the process.

I am an artisan photographer, living in Lanzarote (Canary Islands) and I work with recycled materials, making prints in cyanotype. The blue sky and the ocean have been the reason for me to change from my black and white photography to the wonderful Prussian blue of cyanotype. The power of hundreds volcanoes and the ocean treasures of Lanzarote always inspire me.
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Note, only for who lives inside the European Union:
I post the item from the Canary Islands which are part of Spain but not part of the Community territory for the purposes of VAT. Etsy will charges you the VAT of your EU Country while you pay. In very rare occasions, for a bureaucratic problem, your postal service may ask you to pay VAT and some other taxes again. Please, pay it to get your purchase since those undue taxes will be reimbursed to you.