Archeology have found evidence of textile dyeing dating back to the Neolithic period. In China, dyeing with plants, barks and insects has been traced back more than 5,000 years.Goodwin (1982), p. 11. The essential process of dyeing changed little over time. Typically, the dye material is put in a pot of water and heated to extract the dye compounds into solution with the water. Then the textiles to be dyed are added to the pot, and held at heat until the desired color is achieved. Textile fibre may be dyed before spinning or weaving ("dyed in the wool"), after spinning ("yarn-dyed") or after weaving ("piece-dyed").Kerridge (1988), pp. 15, 16, 135. Many natural dyes require the use of substances called to bind the dye to the textile fibres. Mordants () are that can form a stable molecular coordination complex with both natural dyes and natural fibres. Historically, the most common mordants were alum (potassium aluminum sulfatea metal salt of aluminum) and iron (ferrous sulfate). Many other metal salt mordants were also used, but are seldom used now due to modern research evidence of their extreme toxicity either to human health, ecological health, or both. These include salts of metals such as chrome, copper, tin, lead, and others. In addition, a number of non-metal salt substances can be used to assist with the molecular bonding of natural dyes to natural fibreseither on their own, or in combination with metal salt mordantsincluding tannin from gallnut, "pseudo-tannins", such as plant-derived oxalic acid, and ammonia from stale urine. Plants that bio-accumulate aluminum have also been used. Some mordants, and some dyes themselves, produce strong odors, and large-scale dyeworks were often isolated in their own districts.
Throughout history, people have dyed their textiles using common, locally available materials, but scarce dyestuffs that produced brilliant and permanent colors such as the natural invertebrate dyes Tyrian purple and crimson kermes became highly prized luxury items in the ancient and medieval world. A less expensive substitute for Tyrian purple was the purple/violet colored Folium also called Turnsole. Plant-based dyes such as isatis tinctoria ( Isatis tinctoria), Indigo dye, saffron, and Rose madder were important trade goods in the economies of Asia, Africa and Europe. Dyes such as cochineal and logwood ( Haematoxylum campechianum) were brought to Europe by the Spain treasure fleets, and the dyestuffs of Europe were carried by colonists to America.
The discovery of man-made dye in the mid-19th century triggered a long decline in the large-scale market for natural dyes. In the early 21st century, the market for natural dyes in the fashion industry is experiencing a resurgence. Western consumers have become more concerned about the health and environmental impact of synthetic dyeswhich require the use of toxic fossil fuel byproducts for their productionin manufacturing and there is a growing demand for products that use natural dyes.
Cellulose fibres have a lower affinity for natural dyes than do protein fibres. The most common method for preparing cellulose fibres is to use a tannin first (tannins have high affinity for both protein and cellulose fibres), then use an aluminum salt. The most common method for preparing protein fibres is to use alum. However, the historic record contains many hundreds of different mordanting methods for both protein and cellulose fibres.
The types of natural dyes currently popular with craft dyers and the global fashion industry include:
The chemical analysis that would definitively identify the dyes used in ancient textiles has rarely been conducted, and even when a dye such as indigo blue is detected it is impossible to determine which of several indigo-bearing plants was used.Barber (1991), pp. 227, 237. Nevertheless, based on the colors of surviving textile fragments and the evidence of actual dyestuffs found in archaeological sites, reds, blues, and yellows from plant sources were in common use by the late Bronze Age and Iron Age.
In the 18th century Jeremias Friedrich Gülich made substantial contributions to refining the dyeing process, making particular progress on setting standards on dyeing sheep wool and many other textiles. His contributions to refining the dyeing process and his theories on color brought much praise by the well known poet and artist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Some dyestuffs, such as indigo dye and , will give good color when used alone; these dyes are called direct dyes or . The majority of plant dyes, however, also require the use of a mordant, a chemical used to "fix" the color in the textile . These dyes are called adjective dyes or "mordant dyes". By using different mordants, dyers can often obtain a variety of colors and shades from the same dye, as many mordants not only fix the natural dye compounds to the fibre, but can also modify the final dye color. Fibres or cloth may be pretreated with mordants (pre-mordant), or the mordant may be incorporated in the dyebath (meta-mordant, or co-mordant), or the mordanting may be done after dyeing (post-mordant).
Natural alum (aluminum sulfate) has been the most common metallic salt mordant for millennia (see Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis, mordant and dye recipes start at recipe #84), but tin (stannous chloride), copper (cupric sulfate), iron (ferrous sulfate, called copperas) and chrome (potassium dichromate) are also used. Iron mordants "sadden" colors, while alum and tin mordants brighten colors. Iron, chrome and tin mordants contribute to fabric deterioration, referred to as "dye rot". Additional modifiers may be used during or after dyeing to protect fibre structure, shift pH to achieve different color results, or for any number of other desirably outcomes.Barber (1991), pp. 235–36, 239.Goodwin (1982), pp. 32–34. Metal-salt accumulating plants (including ) were also commonly used as mordants in parts of Europe, but are now endangered in many areas. The Symplocos genus of plants, which grows in semi-tropical regions, also bioaccumulates aluminum, and is still popular with natural dyers.
Across Asia and Africa and the Americas, patterned fabrics were produced using resist dyeing techniques to control the absorption of color in piece-dyed cloth. In China, Japan, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Gambia, and other parts of West Africa and southeast Asia, patterned silk and cotton fabrics were produced using techniques in which the cloth is printed or with starch or wax, or tied in various ways to prevent even penetration of the dye when the cloth is piece-dyed. The Chinese ladao process is dated to the 10th century; other traditional techniques include tie-dye, batik, Rōketsuzome, katazome, bandhani and leheria.Gillow & Sentence (1999), pp. 122–36.
Some mordants and some dyestuffs produce strong odours, and the process of dyeing often depends on a good supply of fresh water, storage areas for bulky plant materials, vats which can be kept heated (often for days or weeks) along with the necessary fuel, and airy spaces to dry the dyed textiles. Ancient large-scale dye-works tended to be located on the outskirts of populated areas.Barber (1991), p. 239.
Turkey red was a strong, very fast red dye for cotton obtained from madder root via a complicated multistep process involving "sumac and oak galls, calf's blood, sheep's dung, oil, soda, alum, and a solution of tin".Goodwin (1982), p. 65. Turkey red was developed in India and spread to Turkey. Greek workers familiar with the methods of its production were brought to France in 1747, and Dutch and English spies soon discovered the secret. A sanitized version of Turkey red was being produced in Manchester by 1784, and roller-printed dress cottons with a Turkey red ground were fashionable in England by the 1820s.Tozer & Levitt (1983), pp. 29–30.Cannon & Cannon (2002), p. 76.
Munjeet or Indian madder ( Rubia cordifolia) is native to the Himalayas and other mountains of Asia and Japan. Munjeet was an important dye for the Asian cotton industry and is still used by craft dyers in Nepal.Cannon & Cannon (2002), p. 80.
In tropical Asia, a red dye is obtained from sappanwood ( Biancaea sappan). In Malaysia and Laos, a red to purple dye is produced from the root of the Indian mulberry ( Morinda tinctoria). In the Philippines, red dye was obtained from noni ( Morinda citrifolia) roots, sapang (sappanwood), katuray ( Sesbania grandiflora), and Pterocarpus wood ( Pterocarpus spp.), among other plants.
Puccoon or bloodroot ( Sanguinaria canadensis) is a popular red dye among Southeastern Native American basketweavers.Chancey (2005), p. 37. Choctaw basketweavers additionally use sumac for red dye.Chancey (2005), p. 51. artists from Texas and Louisiana used the water oak ( Quercus nigra L.) to produce red.Chancey (2005), p. 66.
A delicate rose color in comes from fermented prickly pear cactus fruit, Opuntia polyacantha.Bryan & Young (2002), p. 5. Navajo weavers also use rainwater and red dirt to create salmon-pink dyes.Bryan & Young (2002), p. 62.
In rivercane basketweaving among Southeastern Woodlands tribes in the Americas, butternut ( Juglans cinerea) and yellow root ( Xanthorhiza simplicissima) provide a rich yellow color. Chitimacha basket weavers have a complex formula for yellow that employs a dock plant (most likely Rumex crispus) for yellow.Chancey (2005), p. 47. Navajo artists create yellow dyes from Gutierrezia, brown onion skins, and rubber plant ( Parthenium incanum). Chrysothamnus ( Chrysothamnus) and produce pale, yellow-cream colored dyes.
Soft olive greens are also achieved when textiles dyed yellow are treated with an iron mordant. The dull green cloth common to the Iron Age Halstatt culture shows traces of iron, and was possibly colored by boiling yellow-dyed cloth in an iron pot.Barber (1991), p. 228. Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau in North America used lichen to dye corn husk bags a sea green.Chancey (2005), p. 173.
Navajo textile artist Nonabah Gorman Bryan developed a two-step process for creating green dye. First the Churro wool yarn is dyed yellow with sagebrush, Artemisia tridentata, and then it is soaked in black dye afterbath. Red onion skins are also used by Navajo dyers to produce green.
In the Philippines, blue to indigo colors were also obtained from Indigofera tinctoria and related species, known under common names including tarum, dagum, tayum.
In Central America and South America, the important blue dyes were Añil ( Indigofera suffruticosa) and Natal indigo ( Indigofera arrecta).Goodwin (1982), p. 70.
In temperate climates including Europe, indigo was obtained primarily from woad ( Isatis tinctoria), an indigenous plant of Assyria and the Levant which has been grown in Northern Europe over 2,000 years, although from the 18th century it was mostly replaced by superior Indian indigo imported by the British East India Company. Woad was carried to New England in the 17th century and used extensively in America until native stands of indigo were discovered in Florida and the Carolinas. In Sumatra, indigo dye is extracted from some species of Marsdenia. Other indigo-bearing dye plants include dyer's knotweed ( Polygonum tinctorum) from Japan and the coasts of China, and the West African shrub Lonchocarpus cyanescens.Goodwin (1982), pp. 11, 70–76. The cultivation of indigo was swiftly displaced by synthetic indigo, which is identical to the natural material and environmentally friendlier as its production did not require hundreds of square kilometers of monoculture.
====Examples of dyeing with indigo====
Choctaw artists traditionally used maple ( Acer sp.) to create lavender and purple dyes. Purples can also be derived from , and from the berries of White Bryony from the northern Rocky Mountain states and mulberry ( morus nigra) (with an acid mordant).Goodwin (1982), pp. 107, 112.
Black walnut ( Juglans nigra) is used by Cherokee artists to produce a deep brown approaching black. Today black walnut is primarily used to dye baskets but has been used in the past for fabrics and deerhide. Juniper, Juniperus monosperma, ashes provide brown and yellow dyes for Navajo people, as do the hulls of ( Juglans major).Bryan & Young (2002), p. 61. Khaki, which translates a Hindustani word signifying "soil-colored", was introduced into British uniforms in India, which were dyed locally with a dye prepared from the native Nannorrhops.
In the Philippines, black dye was obtained from Diospyros ferrea ( knalum or batulinao) leaves, as well as from indigo.
Murex dyes were fabulously expensive – one snail yields but a single drop of dye – and the Roman Empire imposed a strict monopoly on their use from the reign of Alexander Severus (AD 225–235) that was maintained by the succeeding Byzantine Empire until the Early Middle Ages.Munro, John H. "The Anti-Red Shift – To the Dark Side: Colour Changes in Flemish Luxury Woollens, 1300–1500". In Netherton and Owens-Crocker (2007), pp. 56–57. The dye was used for imperial manuscripts on purple parchment, often with text in silver or gold, and porphyrogenitos or "born in the purple" was a term for Byzantine offspring of a reigning Emperor. The color matched the increasingly rare purple rock porphyry, also associated with the imperial family.
When kermes-dyed textiles achieved prominence around the mid-11th century, the dyestuff was called "grain" in all Western European languages because the desiccated eggs resemble fine grains of wheat or sand. Textiles dyed with kermes were described as dyed in the grain. Woollens were frequently dyed in the fleece with woad and then piece-dyed in kermes, producing a wide range colors from blacks and grays through browns, , purples, and blood red. By the 14th and early 15th century, brilliant full grain kermes scarlet was "by far the most esteemed, most regal" color for luxury woollen textiles in the Low Countries, England, France, Spain and Italy.
Cochineal ( Dactylopius coccus) is a scale insect of Central America and North America from which the crimson-colored dye carmine is derived. It was used by the Aztec and Maya peoples. Moctezuma II in the 15th century collected tribute in the form of bags of cochineal dye. Soon after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire cochineal began to be exported to Spain, and by the seventeenth century it was a commodity traded as far away as India. During the colonial period the production of cochineal (in Spanish, grana fina) grew rapidly. Produced almost exclusively in Oaxaca by indigenous producers, cochineal became Mexico's second most valued export after silver. Cochineal produces purplish colors alone and brilliant scarlets when mordanted with tin; thus cochineal, which produced a stronger dye and could thus be used in smaller quantities, replaced kermes dyes in general use in Europe from the 17th century.Schoeser (2007), pp. 121, 248.Barber (1982), p. 55.
Producing fast black in the Middle Ages was a complicated process involving multiple dyeings with woad or indigo followed by mordanting, but at the dawn of Early Modern period, a new and superior method of dyeing black dye reached Europe via Spanish conquests in the New World. The new method used logwood ( Haematoxylum campechianum), a dyewood native to Mexico and Central America. Although logwood was poorly received at first, producing a blue inferior to that of woad and indigo, it was discovered to produce a fast black in combination with a ferrous sulfate (copperas) mordant. Despite changing fashions in color, logwood was the most widely used dye by the 19th century, providing the sober blacks of formal and mourning clothes.
Scientists continued to search for new synthetic dyes that would be effective on cellulose fibres like cotton and linen, and that would be more colorfast on wool and silk than the early anilines. Chrome or mordant dyes produced a muted but very fast color range for woollens. These were followed by for animal fibres (from 1875) and the synthesis of indigo in Germany in 1880. The work on indigo led to the development of a new class of dyes called in 1901 that produced a wide range of fast colors for cellulosic fibers such as cotton.Thompson & Thompson (1987), pp. 11–12. were introduced in 1923 to color the new textiles of cellulose acetate, which could not be colored with any existing dyes. Today disperse dyes are the only effective means of coloring many synthetics. for cotton were introduced in the mid-1950s. These petroleum based, synthetic dyes are used both in commercial textile production and in craft dyeing and have widely replaced natural dyes.
In America, synthetic dyes became popular among a wide range of Native American textile artists; however, natural dyes remained in use, as many textile collectors prefer natural dyes over synthetics. Today, dyeing with natural materials is often practiced as an adjunct to hand spinning, knitting and weaving.Goodwin (1982), pp. 7–8. It remains a living craft in many traditional cultures of North America, Africa, Asia, and the Scottish Highlands.Gillow & Sentance (1999), pp. 118–19.
Ecological consciousness has prompted a renewed interest in natural-dye techniques. The European Union, for example, has encouraged Indonesian batik cloth producers to switch to natural dyes to improve their export market in Europe.
Greens
Blues
Purples
Browns
Grays and blacks
Lichen
Fungi
Luxury dyestuffs
Royal purple
Crimson and scarlet
The rise of formal black
Decline and rediscovery
Synthetic dyes
Technique preservation
Contemporary reskilling
Notes
See also
External links
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