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Indigo turned the El Camino Real into a blue runway as the Spanish escorted it into New Mexico.

In New Spain, indigo’s blue alchemy colored the robes of the friars, the yarns of Navajo rugs and the pigments of the santeros.

“Blue on Blue: Indigo and Cobalt in New Mexico/New Spain” explores the celestial hue beginning Friday at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art in Santa Fe.

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Indigo wound up the royal highway from Mexico sometime in the early 17th century, curator Robin Farwell Gavin said. Used by both the Maya and the Aztecs, the color came from the dried leaves of the indigo plant. Harvesters dried, then crushed the leaves, fermenting them in water, then agitating them to produce oxygen. The indigo settled to the bottom of the bowl or tank, where it dried into blocks or lumps. To reconstitute the compound into dye, fiber lovers mixed it with alkaline.

“Most commonly, they used their urine,” Gavin said, “which stank, but it was free.”

Once it arrived in New Spain, the compound was a triple threat, converting into a dye, a paint and a dry pigment. The plant never grew north of the border because it required the dampness of a tropical climate.

According to oral tradition, artists placed copper pots at both ends of New Mexico’s Hispanic villages to collect children’s urine to turn indigo into dye. They dunked wool or cotton into the dye bath overnight, drying it and rinsing the fabric until the water ran clear. The recipe proved extremely colorfast.

Gavin said the Spanish also brought bolts of blue cotton, wool, silk and linen to New Mexico. Soldiers used indigo to dye their uniforms. The friars used it to produce their vestments.

“The Franciscans wore blue,” Gavin said. “We think it was because the Franciscans were big fans of the Virgin Mary and big fans of the Immaculate Conception.”

The santeros used the dried version as pigment for their retablos and bultos. The Rio Grande weavers dyed their churro yarn with indigo to weave blue blankets. As the Spanish traded with American Indians, the Navajos did the same with their own textiles.

“For many years, people thought the artists in New Mexico didn’t know what they were doing because they depicted (the friars) in blue habits,” Gavin added. European monks traditionally wore brown or grey.

In the 1950s, New Mexico priest and historian Fray Angelico Chavez and historian E. Boyd discovered the remnants of blue robes inside a sarcophagus hidden within Santa Fe’s Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.

If you go

WHAT: “Blue on Blue: Indigo and Cobalt in New Mexico/New Spain”

WHEN: Friday, May 8, through February 2016

WHERE: Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, 750 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill, Santa Fe

HOW MUCH: $5; under 16 free. Free to New Mexico residents Sundays. Call 505-982-2226 or visit “Blue on Blue: Indigo and Cobalt in New Mexico/New Spain”Friday, May 8, through February 2016Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, 750 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill, Santa Fe$5; under 16 free. Free to New Mexico residents Sundays. Call 505-982-2226 or visit spanishcolonial.org

In 1786 the government of New Spain bought blue woven goods and pounds of indigo dye to reward its Native American allies, especially the Navajos, Utes and Comanches.

Spanish mapmaker/santero Bernardo Miera y Pacheco discovered blue pigment at Zuni Pueblo. He wrote to Spain about the importance and economic potential of “Zuni blue.”

Cobalt also played a role in this New Mexico rhapsody in blue. Cobalt-based blue pigments have been used since ancient times for jewelry and paints, and to impart a distinctive blue tint to glass.

In New Spain, the chemical most likely occurred as a product of Mexico’s sprawling silver mines, Gavin said. Potters used it in kiln-fired ware and glass. At the time, the blue-and-white Chinese Ming Dynasty porcelain was the most coveted pottery in the world. These served as models for the potters of New Spain.

In New Mexico, Spanish potters introduced the potter’s wheel and the horno árabe or beehive kiln. Tibores were storage jars patterned after Chinese ginger jars. New Spain potters often referred to them as chocolateras to store their favorite beverage. Created primarily in Puebla and Mexico City, producers shipped the pottery as far north as Santa Fe.

From images of the Virgin Mary to household blankets and ceramics, blue was an integral part of the colonial world. The desire for blue-and-white ceramics led to a near 300-year monopoly for New Spain workshops creating pottery mirroring Chinese porcelains. To early Christians, blue was both celestial and divine, forever linked to the Virgin Mary.