Bluing

A classic grade school science (or is it art?) activity calls for charcoal briquettes, ammonia, salt, water, food coloring, and bluing. What is bluing? Bluing is a dye used to treat clothing that has yellowed with age and use. Here is copy from the website for Mrs. Stewart’s Bluing:
“As home washing tips are passed down from grandparent to parent to child, more and more people are discovering the value of Mrs. Stewart's Bluing (MSB)! Not only does it whiten whites, it also brightens colors and does so without harsh chemicals, prolonging the life of any garment. People are seeking environmentally safe products and they know that MSB is non-toxic and biodegradable. The versatility of MSB seems infinite. While we manufacture MSB as a laundry whitener, many have found other uses for bluing as well. Make a Salt Crystal Garden, whiten dingy hair on a pet, reduce algae growth in bird baths, fish ponds and fountains, ease the pain of an ant bite or bee sting, and much more with this unique, versatile and economical product that has been a staple in many homes for over 120 years - since 1883!”
It seems as if we perceive a slightly blue cast as being what makes whiteness bright. I think of blueish shadows on drifts of snow. This slightly-blue-to-make-white concept is most familiar to us through the phenomenon of “blue haired ladies”, women who tint their coiffures slightly blue to counter the yellowing of white hair (caused largely by cigarette smoke). In England, the somewhat pejorative term “blue rinse brigade” is used to describe elderly middle class ladies of conservative socio-political persuasion. This group is usually characterized as forming the backbone of local branches of the Conservative Party, who tend to disapprove of female or non-white candidates for elections. (Wikipedia, 2008)
Bluing usually comes in liquid form, but solid forms of bluing are sometimes used by “hoodoo doctors to provide the blue color needed for ‘mojo hands’.” (Wikipedia, 2008)
Bluing is still widely used in India and Pakistan, but has largely disappeared from general use in the U.S. and the U.K. – except for in the making of Salt Crystal Gardens in grade school science (or is it art?) lessons.
I remember when, as a little boy, I tried to make my first Salt Crystal Garden. I pored over my science-experiments-you-can-do-at-home book, which said that Salt Crystal Gardens could easily be made using ingredients “you already have in the house!” Well, not my house. I searched our pantry thoroughly, I got up on a rickety stool and searched the cabinets over the refrigerator, I got down on my hands and knees and searched under the kitchen sink. I found my mother’s supply of ammonia, salt, food coloring, even charcoal briquettes, but of bluing I found none. And I was too embarrassed to confront my dear mom with this gaping void in her cleaning and coloring inventory. My second grade teacher (AND my third grade teacher AND my fifth grade teacher) introduced us (and reintroduced us and reintroduced us) to the Salt Crystal Garden activity, and we dutifully pretended to be surprised and amazed each time, though I never gathered the nerve to demand to know where in the hell they got the darned bluing.
Recently, I found it readily available at my local Jewel Food Store, just around the corner from my home. Between the Soilex and the Mountain Spring Tide.
The recipe for making a Salt Crystal Garden is simple:
Place charcoal briquettes (or other porous materials) into a bowl.
Add a mixture of bluing, water, salt, and ammonia.
Drizzle some food coloring over the briquettes.
Within a day’s time, the mixture starts to evaporate, and the salt crystallizes around the blue particles suspended in the liquid. There is no chemical reaction. It’s all about evaporation and crystallization. Capillary action allows the mixture to keep crystallizing into elaborate, delicate “blossoms”. The Schylling Toy Company even produces a version of the Salt Crystal Garden made of paper structures that create a shimmering little Mount Fuji, complete with miniature crystalline pink-flowering cherry trees.
This is all pretty cool – but it is definitely NOT a science experiment. Even as a child I wondered why teachers kept on insisting that it was. An experiment tests a hypothesis. The only hypothesis that I ever tested concerning Salt Crystal Gardens was the one suggesting that a search in any pantry would reveal a bottle of bluing- something my own experiments had disproved years before.
This is a problem for science education (or is it arts education?). Teachers, glad to have a stockpile of activities they can count on to charm bored, fidgeting students on a rainy day, fail to discriminate between what is essentially a good magic show on the one hand, and scientific and aesthetic thinking on the other. Surefire arts and science activities definitely are fun, and god knows schools need every bit of fun they can muster, but delightful activities are just that- delightful activities. If we truly expect teachers to develop our students’ minds, our teachers will need a lot more access to authentic science and arts experiences themselves.
Part of the problem may stem from late 50’s and early 60’s images of science- heavy on the window dressing (all those random flashing lights in the consoles of filmic rocket ships, lots of spiraling glass tubes and boiling flasks and beakers, and those stupendous Tesla Coil arcs of electricity crackling up to the ceilings of various mad scientists’ lairs) - and light on the actual science.
Images of artists from this period are even less artful – stereotypes of Greenwich Village bohemians producing meaningless “abstract art” and incomprehensible music, finger snapping beatniks gibbering nonsensical word jazz (the elders among us will remember the pre “Gilligan’s Island” Bob Denver portraying the beatnik Maynard G. Krebs on the classic sitcom “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”), and cartoonish satires of Martha Graham-esque dancers contorting themselves into various states of pretentious, symbolic self-expression. This whole catalogue of stereotypes is vividly recorded in the 1957 Audrey Hepburn/Fred Astaire film "Funny Face".
Salt Crystal Gardens were popular during the Great Depression (when there actually was a bottle of bluing in every pantry), earning their intricate configurations the moniker of “Depression Flowers”. Having found my very own bottle of bluing at long last, I am currently growing a Salt Crystal Garden on my 2008 living-room coffee table. I am using a bowl of Depression Glass (so named because this glassware was given away free during the Depression at movie theaters and in boxes of oatmeal and laundry detergent). For contemporary accuracy, I should probably rename my Salt Crystal Garden blossoms “Recession Flowers”.
The garden’s formations unfold in food-colored glory, but if unattended, powder into dust. The garden keeps growing, but needs to be fed every few days, or it dies. A lot like the man-eating plant Audrey II in the films and the musical “Little Shop of Horrors”, only the Salt Crystal Garden doesn’t require the sacrifice of human blood. Unless it’s blue blood.
So I finally have my own bluing and my own garden. What conclusion did Voltaire’s “Candide” come to at the end of his travails? “We must cultivate our garden.” Mine is made of salt, ammonia, food coloring, and bluing. It’s not much in the way of science (or art?), but it is beautiful. Fragile, irrelevant, and beautiful.

Arnold Aprill
Founding and Creative Director
Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE)
www.capeweb.org