The Benibana Museum (The Safflower Museum)

15.How to Make Rouge (紅粉<口紅>の精製法)

　　

1. Give a slice cut to a cake of benibana. And soak them into water overnight. Put them in a cotton bag and crumple well, then take off the yellow colored water.
   
2. Put them in a bamboo basket and put lye over them and make beni-color liquid. And add plum (梅) vinegar to make the red color thicker.
   
3. Soak aoso cloth (青荢布) into the liquid and repeat soaking and wringing again and again to settle the beni-color on the cloth.
   
4. Rinse the colored cloth with water and put a hot lye over it and take the red pigment out of it.
   
5. Add the plum vinegar again to this beni-pigment and pour into the silk clothed wood-made pail.
   
6. After repeating this process, scoop up the beni settled on the silk cloth and gather them in the porcelain.

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