The history and methods behind fabric dying From Ancient Egypt to the modern day - for over 4000 years mankind has been brightening up clothing with natural and synthetic dyes. Throughout the ages adding individuality to clothing with colour has been used to denote gender, status and allegiance. It started with natural mineral and plant dyes, but with the discovery of synthetic dyes came a plethora of colour choice. We take a deeper look into the history of dying and what different dyes are made from.
The first dyed fabrics
When the first humans created clothes made from linseed and cotton, the need for dyeing was absent. All the garments were used in their natural colour, which was something close to pale grey or white. After centuries of using these textiles, when the first civilisations were flourishing in the Middle East, in Egypt and in Asia, the need to distinguish gender and class became more pronounced and so the first natural dyes were created. Scientists have even found evidence about the first natural reds and oranges in tombs back to 2600BC. An important manuscript of the Hellenistic period showing exactly the importance of the dyeing industry in the ancient world is the so-called Stockholm Papyrus. It contains over a hundred recipes for manufacturing dyes and how to apply them to textiles. It is an important source, as it follows the development of the dyeing industry from the Hellenistic to Roman times.
Mineral dyes
Mineral dyes came from minerals found on the earth's surface and in mines. Hematite for red, limonite for yellow and lazurite for blue were used to provide the necessary colours for textiles. By scratching the rocks surface, a powder was created, which after solving with water or oil, was ready to use.
Animal dyes
Another type of natural dyes came from animals – such as insects, lichens and shellfish. The most well-known insects that have been used during the ancient times are kermes and cochineal, which produced scarlet and crimson red accordingly. They reds that were extracted were so renowned that even now we use the same names to describe these shades. Vegetable dyes Vegetable dyes are made from leaves, bark or roots from trees and plants. They were the most used in antiquity as they were the easiest to find and develop. The most common dyes were made of madder for red, saffron and safflower for yellow and indigo for blue and blueish purple. Items dyed in indigo were considered luxurious, as they were hard to find. Lichens were an important source of natural dye for the natives of North America, as they produced yellow dye by boiling lichens in water. Another type of dye from lichens (orchil dye) was also known to ancient Greeks and Romans, who used it in the place of the more expensive Tyrian purple. When comparing the two though, the orchil purple dye was not as colourfast as the Tyrian purple, and the end result was not as bright as the much coveted Tyrian purple.
Courtesy:https://blog.patra.com/
