dyeing-msg - 3/19/08
Dyeing techniques and discussion. Both modern and period dyes.
NOTE: See also the files: green-art, mordants-msg, washing-msg, woad-msg.
KEYWORDS: dyes dyeing medieval mordants woad indigo madder saffron lichens techniques overdyeing
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Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous
Stefan at florilegium.org
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From: lisch at mentor.com (Ray Lischner)
Date: 17 Jan 90 22:14:29 GMT
Organization: Mentor Graphics Corp., Beaverton, OR
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
My lady wife, aoibhinn ni luan, recommends "A Weaver's Garden,"
by Rita Buchanan (1987, Interweave Press, ISBN 0-934026-28-9).
A Weaver's Garden covers the use of plants in fabric making,
including dyeing. The time period covered includes the SCA period,
and more. Included are some color pictures of the results, showing
that diverse, bright colors can be obtained from period dyes.
Not all natural dyes are period, and Ms. Buchanan mentions
the history of the plants and their uses.
There are also chapters on using plants for cleaning, plants
as used in tools (such as Fullers' Teasle for carding wool),
and making your own garden.
The references and suggested readings include technical articles
for those who are interested in chemistry.
--
Ray Lischner UUCP: {uunet,decwrl}!mntgfx!lisch
From: DICKSNR at qucdn.queensu.ca ("Ross M. Dickson")
Date: 20 Jan 91 18:16:00 GMT
Greetings to the Rialto from Sarra Graeham, courtesy of Lord Angus:
In Digest v.4 no.25, Herr Peder Klingrode (Leif Euren) writes:
> In fact, in the early Middle Ages, blue dye for textiles were hard
> (not to say impossible) to get, while green was easy to come by; while
> quite the opposite was true for paints. Thus, a person with a Azure
> coat-of-arms wore a green tabard and flew a green flag: the colours
> were considered equal.
My knowledge of the several technologies that Herr Peder brings together
here are not perfect, but my gut reaction is that this statement is an
example of modern misunderstanding of period technologies.
First off, it is my understanding that the woad plant, which produces a
dye chemically identical to indigo, was available and used as a dye in the
British Isles from well before the Roman times. (Can someone correct me
on this? I have references to it being used as a pigment from the 9th C.)
I'm sure that woad or indigo, indigo having been imported since at least
the first Crusade, was used in the Bayeux Tapestry to produce a slightly
greenish -- but unmistakable -- blue. Furthermore, most blue pigments
available for painting at that time -- indigo, azurite, copper blues --
had more or less greenish casts, so a greenish-blue dye would not be con-
sidered out of place. So-called azure or ultramarine blue, made of ground
and processed lapis lazuli, could not be manufactured in Europe until the
13th C., and was an imported luxury until that time.
Secondly, "coats-of-arms" as such did not really exist until the mid to
late 12th C. Admittedly, great lords probably had battle flags and livery
colours before then, but not in the same profusion. (Perhaps one or more
of the heralds on the net could provide better information.) By the 12th
C., indigo dye was available all over Europe. In fact, I have been told
by dyers that good greens are much harder to get than blues, given the
availability of indigo, and indigo dye with an overdyeing of yellow is
necessary to be able to make the best greens.
Herr Peder (or anyone else who might be listening), do you have more evi-
dence to support your statement? My case is merely circumstantial, and
I would happily be corrected by someone who knew better.
Sarra Graeham, Canton of Greyfells | Heather Fraser
Barony of the Skraeling Althing | Kingston, Ontario, CANADA
Principality of Ealdormere, Midrealm | c/o dicksnr at qucdn.queensu.ca
From: pears at latcs1.oz.au (Arnold N Pears)
Date: 21 Jan 91 05:52:43 GMT
Organization: Comp Sci, La Trobe Uni, Australia
timm at hoss.unl.edu (Tim Myers) writes:
>everyone. Then we hit upon an idea, DMC floss is very consistent in its
>colors and numbering scheme, and you can find DMC floss all over the place.
>What would happen if kingdom level sewing guild got together with the
>current royalty and heirs and decided what OFFICIAL CALONTIR PURPURE AND OR
>were? Especially since there was a request a twelfth night for more Calontir
>fighting tabards. Wouldn't it be nice if they all looked the same?
While the idea of uniformity is attractive to the modern eye, I
suspect that in the SCA period, even if you take it to extend from
600-1650AD, the colour of cloth would have varied considerably
from batch to batch.
The dyeing of cloth with natural dyes is a complex task, and
fixing some of the more rare colours, such as purple, made them
expensive during the mediaeval period. I find it difficult to
believe that any group prior to the 18th century would have placed
much importance on the exact shade. To do so would require the
establishment of uniforms and hence bulk production of cloth for
a specific purpose, which to the best of my knowledge is
really outside the scope of the recreation.
I suggest you all just buy local purple, as you would have done
in the period, and pride yourselves on the period look of your
soldiery.
Lord Arenwald von Hagenburg
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Arnold Pears. Computer Sci Dept ACSNET : pears at latcs1.oz
La Trobe Uni, Bundoora 3083.
VIC, AUSTRALIA "Well here we all are then."
Ph (03) 479-1144 -ME
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From: bloch at thor.ucsd.edu (Steve Bloch)
Date: 21 Jan 91 07:37:19 GMT
DICKSNR at qucdn.queensu.ca (Ross M. Dickson, really Sarra Greaham) writes:
>First off, it is my understanding that the woad plant, which produces a
>dye chemically identical to indigo....
"Blue may be dyed with woad alone, which would give a permanent but
not a deep blue; but if indigo be mixed with it, a very rich colour
will be obtained."
"Take a quarter of a pound of indigo, half a pound of pot ash, a
quarter of a pound of madder, and three handfuls of bran: let them
boil for half an hour, and then settle; with this ley grind the indigo
in a copper bowl: put this in an old vat of indigo, or on a new one of
woad, and it will make it fit for use in twenty-four hours."
>Furthermore, most blue pigments
>available for painting at that time -- indigo, azurite, copper blues --
>had more or less greenish casts, so a greenish-blue dye would not be con-
>sidered out of place.
"Receipt to dye 8 lbs. of Deep Blue in Linen or Cotton.
Take 4 ounces of indigo and grind fine, 2 ounces of madder, 8 ounces
of copperas, 8 ounces of pot ash, 4 ounces of lime, and 1 ounce of
alum: mix it all together with 5 gallons of soft water...."
>In fact, I have been told
>by dyers that good greens are much harder to get than blues, given the
>availability of indigo, and indigo dye with an overdyeing of yellow is
>necessary to be able to make the best greens.
"To dye Cotton Yarn a Deep Blue.
Take one pound of logwood chipped fine or pounded and boil it in a
sufficient quantity of water till the whole colouring matter is
extracted, then take about half a gallon of this liquor and dissolve
it in an ounce of verdigris ... or if you want an elegant green, boil
hickory bark in the liquor and it will produce it."
"Saxon greens" are produced by dying with indigo sulphate after a
tin-and-oak-bark mordant.
Three other greens, however, are described as a blue dye followed by
a yellow, or vice versa.
All quotations are taken from "The Arcana of Arts and Sciences", by M.
Parker; this is a primary source, but only from 1824, and written in
the U.S. so some of the plants may not exist in Europe.
--
Stephen Bloch
Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
>sca>Caid>Calafia>St.Artemas
bloch at cs.ucsd.edu
From: leeu at alex.stacken.kth.se (Leif Euren)
Date: 21 Jan 91 09:02:09 GMT
Organization: The Internet
Berengaria (<well!jeannec at apple.com> (Jeanne C. Stapleton)) writeth:
> ... I like the idea of telling people to match to a particular color
> of DMC embroidery floss. Reason: have you ever looked through your
> kingdom's regalia? There are several sets of surcoats/cloaks/etc.
> in the West Kingdom Regalia, most of which never get worn, largely
> because a hideous shade of green was used in their construction.
It's sad to see regaila unused, beacuse our modern eyes think the
colours are "hideous". On the other hand: people in the Middle Ages
would have loved yarn and cloth of consistent colour.
> Think how much easier looking for "DMC #345" would be for local
> costumers trying to make surcoats for members of their shire or barony
> who were to be part of a kingdom levy or shieldwall. The color would
> be instantly identifiable to anyone glancing around as "part of my unit".
As it were (and this is my speculation) they reduced the numbers of
heraldic colours to allow for deviation, so that and soldier could
tell a friend, even if he had changed to a new tabard.
Thus, I don't see any fault in recommending a shade-by-number for
"official" items; be it paint, dyed textile or others.
We shouldn't make it a law, though.
Elaine NicMaoilan (<trifid at agora.rain.com> (Edward Fitzgerald)) writeth:
> ... I find it hard to believe consistency was not possible, within
> reason, in period! (Not perfect matches, perhaps, but close enough
> for the casual observer to not see a glaring difference....) Surely
> weavers traded formulae and hanks of threads as samples?
Consistency in shade of colour is *VERY* difficult to obtain if one
has to resort to plant-dying, even in our Current Middle Ages, when we
in fact know how to make pecise records of previous dyings. And in
the real Middle Ages, dyers did *NOT* trade their formulaes, as they
were their wealth.
But the again, shades "close enough for the casual observer to not see
a glaring difference" would be the pride of every master dyer, and
they certainly did appear during the Middle Ages.
Herr Peder Klingrode +---------------------------+
Canton of Holmgard | Leif Euren |
Barony of Nordmark | |
Principality of Drachenwald | leeu at alex.stacken.kth.se |
Kingdom of the East +---------------------------+
From: leeu at alex.stacken.kth.se (Leif Euren)
Date: 21 Jan 91 17:55:42 GMT
Herr Peder Klingrode greets all Gentle of the Rialto: Frid vare med Eder!
Lord Arenwald von Hagenburg (pears at latcs1.oz.au (Arnold N Pears)) writeth:
> I find it difficult to believe that any group prior to the 18th
> century would have placed much importance on the exact shade.
So do I, but I also argue that a person who could afford to outfit his
entire staff in a uniformly coloured livery, would do so to show off
his wealth: everybody could see that he had bought all that fabric at
the same time!
Sarra Graeham (Heather Fraser) writeth:
> ... the woad plant, which produces a dye chemically identical to
> indigo, was available and used as a dye in the British Isles from well
> before the Roman times.
And it was used in Scandinavia, too, in the 10th C.
> I'm sure that woad or indigo <...> produce a slightly greenish -- but
> unmistakable -- blue.
Depending of what kind of metal the kettle is of, you may get many
strange shades when dying with indigo.
> In fact, I have been told by dyers that good greens are much harder to
> get than blues, given the availability of indigo, and indigo dye with
> an overdyeing of yellow is necessary to be able to make the best
> greens.
If you (or rather, the dyers) by "good greens" mean "_beautiful_
greens", you're absolutely right. And this is not even subjectively:
everybody (well, _almost_ everybody) will admit that yellow over-
coloured with indigo is more beautiful than naturally dyed green.
> Herr Peder, do you have more evidence to support your statement?
I'm sorry to say that I no evidence for my statements; it was just
something I read in a book on Heraldry, and I don't even remember
which (I'll have a look in my library, and I'll be back with a
reference if I find one).
I, too, would happily be corrected by someone who knew better.
> ... ground and processed lapis lazuli, could not be manufactured in
> Europe until the 13th C.
I don't really believe you. But then again, I may be wrong.
Could you explain why this was so?
Herr Peder Klingrode, Canton of Holmgard | Leif Euren
Barony of Nordmark | Stockholm, Sweden
Principality of Drachenwald, East | leeu at alex.stacken.kth.se
From: Chaz Butler
To: "Ross M. Dickson
Date: 23-Jan-91 04:59pm
Subject: Re: 'official' colors
There is a woman at Pennsic every year with a dyer's wheel. This has formula
from plants native to Britain and Europe fixed with various mineral salts.
The colors range from 5 shades of magenta, through hot pinks, bright oranges,
lime and electric greens, vivid blues, indigos, electric blues, and deep
purples, as well as browns and puces. If she, with only a couple of years of
experimenting with plants native to Europe and a dyer's cloth can come up with
many shades, and duplicate them, then the dyers of Europe surely did the same.
From: haslock at rust.zso.dec.com (Nigel Haslock)
Date: 22 Jan 91 18:39:04 GMT
Organization: DECwest, Digital Equipment Corp., Bellevue WA
In article <9101210902.AAalex.stacken.kth.se22365 at alex.stacken.kth.se>,
leeu at alex.stacken.kth.se (Leif Euren) writes:
> Berengaria (<well!jeannec at apple.com> (Jeanne C. Stapleton)) writeth:
> > ... I like the idea of telling people to match to a particular color
> > of DMC embroidery floss.
>
> Elaine NicMaoilan (<trifid at agora.rain.com> (Edward Fitzgerald)) writeth:
> > ... I find it hard to believe consistency was not possible, within
> > reason, in period!
>
> But the again, shades "close enough for the casual observer to not see
> a glaring difference" would be the pride of every master dyer, and
> they certainly did appear during the Middle Ages.
I have seen the effects of dying a series of hanks in the same dye bath, they
all came out a different shade and the dyer admitted that predicting the
shade was next to impossible. I take this as evidence that reproducing a shade
was and is so difficult as to be futile to attempt. A close match should be
fairly simple, provided that only one dye bath is needed. Overdying such as
has been mentioned for green would make a close much very difficult.
The next thing to remember is that period dyes are rarely 'fast'. Most dyes
will fade in the sun, leach in the washing and bleed into the adjacent cloth.
A set of tabards will age the same only if they were all made of the same
materials, dyed using the processes. Given the multitude of processes to
obtain specific colours, and the inherent secrecy of the dyers, it is highly
unlikely that cloth from different sources will behave in the same way.
I harbour a deep suspiscion that the ancient tartans of complex design were
originally of simple design but suffered badly from bleeding of dyes before
someone recorded the design. I suspect that the concept of fimbriation
originated in the same way.
The existance of fast bright colours is relatively modern but deeply ingrained
in our culture. Plastics and cartoons are the biggest culprits as far as I am
concerned.
Fiacha
Aquaterra, AnTir
From: atterlep at vela.acs.oakland.edu (Alan Terlep)
Date: 22 Jan 91 15:37:22 GMT
Organization: Oakland University, Rochester MI
leeu at alex.stacken.kth.se (Leif Euren) writes:
>Berengaria (<well!jeannec at apple.com> (Jeanne C. Stapleton)) writeth:
>> Think how much easier looking for "DMC #345" would be for local
>> costumers trying to make surcoats for members of their shire or barony
>> who were to be part of a kingdom levy or shieldwall. The color would
>> be instantly identifiable to anyone glancing around as "part of my unit".
>
>As it were (and this is my speculation) they reduced the numbers of
>heraldic colours to allow for deviation, so that and soldier could
>tell a friend, even if he had changed to a new tabard.
My first response on reading this was "arrgh!" The entire point of heraldry
is to make sure that people are recognizable on the battlefield. If every
member of a group is wearing their heraldic badge there should be no problem
with identification. In fact, most of the heraldic devices and badges we get
are rejected simply because they aren't clearly recognizable at a distance.
Clarity is one of the prime criteria for deciding the acceptability of a piece
of heraldry.
That said, there are a limited number of colors for just the reason Herr
Peter suggests. In fact, the variation possible in heraldic colors is circum-
stantial evidence that there was difficulty in standardizing colors. It does
bother me at times that I enjoy an art form whose spectrum is covered by a set
of Crayola markers, but anyone who has seen the "Heraldry" in the Pern source-
book (from a fantasy workd by Anne McCaffery) will understand the problems
with
"Per pale blue and light blue, in base an erupting volcano brown."
Lord Fairfax Aluricson
Canton of the Riding of Hawkland Moor
Barony of Northwoods, Midrealm
atterlep at vela.acs.oakland.edu
From: com259h at vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Date: 22 Jan 91 03:26:53 GMT
leeu at alex.stacken.kth.se (Leif Euren) writes:
> Elaine NicMaoilan (<trifid at agora.rain.com> (Edward Fitzgerald)) writeth:
>> ... I find it hard to believe consistency was not possible, within
>> reason, in period! (Not perfect matches, perhaps, but close enough
>> for the casual observer to not see a glaring difference....) Surely
>> weavers traded formulae and hanks of threads as samples?
>