The Apothecary's Bench

A medieval colourman's workshop, and a pouring puzzle underneath it. Three pigments — orpiment, ultramarine, vermilion — mix in whole measures to make eighteen historical colours, and every order on the docket wants an exact volume in an exact ratio. Pour wrong and the vessel is ruined; there is no undoing a mixture.

A hundred and two hand-built benches across twenty acts, every one of them solved by machine before it was allowed in, so the par printed beside a level is a proven minimum rather than a guess. A market order every day, the same one for everybody. And a formulary that fills in as you work: a page of real history for each pigment you manage to make.