This is the next post about my Anglo-Saxon-style experiments.
Today’s natural dyers tend to use mainly aluminium mordants and sometimes iron and copper, which may also be used after dyeing as colour modifiers. Chrome, which was not introduced as a mordant until the 19th century, has been popular among some dyers but is avoided by many nowadays because of its toxicity. Similarly tin, which was first used as a mordant in the 17th century (mainly with cochineal to produce bright reds) is now less frequently used, partly because of environmental considerations and partly because it can make fibres brittle. Copper was used by early dyers in the Mediterranean world and also in India in the classical period AD300 – 700 but, of the metallic mordants mentioned above, only alum and iron seem to have been used by the Anglo-Saxons. It is also possible that pots made of metals, such as iron or bronze, may have been used as dyepots and this may have had an effect on the colours. However, the only evidence of dyestuffs staining pots in the early Anglo-Saxon period occurred in pots made of clay and dyeing may have frequently been carried out in clay pots, which would probably not have had a significant effect on the colours produced.
Many of the dyes used by Anglo-Saxon dyers will fix adequately without a mordant and I think it is likely that many fibres would have been dyed in this way. Some textile fragments from the period show evidence of an alum mordant and mineral alum from the Mediterranean was probably used during the later Anglo-Saxon period. However, there is some doubt as to whether this mineral alum would have been available earlier in the period, so alternative mordants may have been used, such as aluminium extracted from clubmosses. Plants rich in tannins, such as oak galls and blackberry leaves and shoots, may also have been used as mordants.
In my experiments I tested most dyes in the following ways:
- Without a mordant
- With a 10% mineral alum mordant
- With alum extracted from clubmoss
- With a tannin mordant (from oak galls or bramble/blackberry leaves and twigs)
- With an iron mordant / use of an iron pot
As clubmosses are rare in Britain, I would not advocate their use, except in very small quantities for experimental purposes. For my tests I used the following recipe for clubmoss as a mordant:
Use 200% clubmoss (Lycopodium spp), chop it up and put it into a pot filled with water, then heat to 40C. Hold at this temperature for 3 days. On the fourth day boil it up briefly and then strain off the liquid. Add the fibres to be mordanted, heat slowly to 40C and then allow to cool Repeat this process daily for 3 days. Then remove the fibres and squeeze the excess liquid back into the solution, which can be re-used once. In order to be sure that aluminium had been extracted and then absorbed by the fibres, I used fibres mordanted with 10% mineral alum and unmordanted fibres as “controls” in the dyebath. The results were particularly clear with madder dye – the unmordanted fibres dyed to a coral shade but both the alum-mordanted and the clubmoss mordanted fibres dyed to an almost identical red shade.
In these tests I used 100% bramble/blackberry leaves and twigs as a tannin mordant. I simmered them for about one hour to extract the tannin, then strained off the liquid, added the fibres and simmered them for about 45 minutes, then left them in the liquid to cool overnight. (25% oak galls can be used instead of bramble leaves and twigs.)
I also experimented with the use of iron and wood-ash-water, which is alkaline, as colour modifiers after dyeing. It is also possible that stale urine may have been added to dyebaths and this would have increased alkalinity.
To make iron water, put some pieces of scrap iron or rusty nails in a large container with a well-fitting lid and fill it up with a solution of two parts water to one part clear vinegar. Leave the iron to steep in this solution for a week or two, until the solution is orange in colour. When you use the iron water, strain it through a fine-meshed sieve or a piece of muslin.
To make wood-ash water, put the ashes from a wood fire into a large glass or plastic container with a well-fitting lid. Fill up with water and leave the ashes to steep for a week or two, until the liquid is yellow in colour and feels slick or slimy to the touch. When you use the solution, pour or siphon it off without disturbing the ash sediment. Wood-ash water can be used as an alkaline modifier and as the source of alkali in woad vats. It can also be added to dyer’s broom and weld dyebaths to increase the depth of colour.
My experiments are intended to demonstrate some of the possible methods used by Anglo-Saxon dyers and to give an idea of the colour range they might have achieved. Although we don’t know exactly how early dyers worked, there is enough evidence to indicate that they would have been able to achieve a wide range of bright, rich colours from the relatively small number of dyes they used.
I will write about individual dyes in later posts.
Ice Flowers
/in Dyeing Tips & RecipesAnother interesting technique from India Flint's book "Eco Colour" is what she calls "ice-flowers". This involves the collection of purple and deep red flower petals (which contain anthocyanins), which are then frozen in plastic containers or sealed plastic freezer bags for at least two days. Following India's instructions, I collected the dead-heads from purple violas over a period of several weeks and froze each batch of flower heads as soon as I had collected them, adding them to the plastic bag in the freezer. When I was ready to use them, I tied a handful of frozen flower heads into a muslin bag, immersed this bag in lukewarm water and squeezed it to extract the colour. The liquid soon became a rich purple colour and I removed the bag with the flowers and then stirred a teaspoonful of alum sulphate into the solution. (I added alum because the materials I intended to dye had not been mordanted. Next time I try this method I'll make sure I have some pre-mordanted fibres ready to use.) I then put some cotton and silk fibres into the liquid and left them to steep overnight. More colour variations are possible if other substances, such as an acid or an alkali, are added to the solution, so I still have much scope for experimentation. (I later added a wool skein to the exhaust dye bath and this became an attractive light leafy green.)
The photos below show, from the top: the frozen viola flowers ready for colour extraction, the dyed materials (silk on the left and cotton on the right)), a closer view of the dyed silk fabric, and finally a closer view of the dyed cotton fabric. The dyed skein is cotton and the dyed cotton fabric is the bag in which the flowers were tied. The attractive variegated colour effects on this bag are probably the result of the flowers being pressed against the fabric. As with the leaf prints, I must test these ice-flower dyes for light- and wash-fastness, once the colours have had time to mature.
Leaf Prints
/in Dyeing Tips & RecipesRecently I was inspired by India Flint’s book “Eco Colour” to experiment with leaf prints. India’s book contains a wealth of ideas and is full of beautiful images of her printed fabrics. This fascinating technique has become very popular among dyers and can have really lovely results.
I collected some leaves from my garden, mainly from a eucalyptus tree and a Judas tree (Cercis siliquastrum), and used cotton and silk fabrics mordanted with alum. (I decided to pre-mordant the fabrics to improve the fastness of the colours.) I placed the leaves on the wetted cotton fabric, added a few rusty nails, put the silk fabric on top of the cotton fabric and then carefully folded the fabrics into a bundle, which I tied with string. I decided to put this bundle into the compost bin my husband uses for grass clippings, as it can get quite hot in there and this therefore seemed a useful way of setting the dyes. After four days, I removed the bundle to reveal the results below. Now I need to do some light- and wash-fastness tests to see how fast the colours achieved from this method will be.
The first photo shows a section of the cotton fabric and the second photo shows a section of the silk fabric.
Images from the garden
/in The Dyer's GardenOur new garden is beginning to take shape and to look and feel more like “ours”. The beds I dug out of the grass earlier in the year are now full of colour and visited regularly by butterflies, bees and other beneficial insects.
The first two photos show general views of the back garden. The following photos show some of the plants in my dye garden: madder, weld, dyer’s broom, lady’s bedstraw. woad in seed with dyer’s broom on the right and dyer’s chamomile with my small purging buckthorn bush in the background.
Anglo-Saxon dyes – woad
/in Dyeing Tips & Recipes, General Dye InformationWoad (Isatis tinctoria) was the Anglo-Saxon source of indigo blue. Although woad is not a true native plant (i.e. it was not present here before the formation of the English Channel), it is thought that it was introduced in the neolithic age when farming began. Some of the earliest textile fragments show evidence of having been dyed with woad and it was probably one of the first dyes to be used. As extracting blue from the indigo-bearing plants is somewhat more complicated than the method of extracting colour from most other plants, it may seem strange that blue was among the first dye colours. However, the indigo-bearing plants, including woad, were generally considered to have healing properties and it may be that their use as dyes developed from their use medicinally. For example, if woad leaves were applied to damaged skin as a poultice, perhaps together with urine, which was regarded as an antiseptic, the conditions necessary for extracting blue from the leaves might have developed. These conditions would be heat (from the skin) an alkaline medium (from the urine as it became stale) and bacteria from the urine. So one can imagine that, if the poultice was removed to reveal blue skin beneath it, people would have been able to work out how to use the leaves to dye textile fibres. Another possible scenario might occur if woollen fleece was being cleaned in a tub of urine and someone dropped woad leaves into the tub by mistake. The woad leaves might remain in the tub long enough for the urine to act on them and could, in effect, create a woad vat in the tub. When removed, the fleece would become blue on contact with the air. Once people noticed the presence of the woad leaves in the tub, they would probably have been able to work out why the fleece had become blue. All this is purely speculation, of course. Woad vats would have been organic in the Anglo-Saxon period and might have been made using stale urine, which provides both the source of alkali and the bacteria needed to make the vat active. Woad leaves may have been harvested and used fresh or they may have been allowed to ferment and processed into woad balls and stored for later use. Another method of dyeing with woad may have been the fermentation vat, made using wood-ash water as the source of alkali and madder and bran to induce fermentation and remove the oxygen from the vat. The recipes for these vats can be found in "Colours from Nature". The first photo below shows pale blue shades from woad. In the second photo the first three skeins show a range of shades from a woad fermentation vat. (The other skeins show lichen purple and black achieved by dyeing.
Anglo-Saxon colours from oak leaves and acorns
/in General Dye InformationAlthough walnut hulls are often the dye of choice for browns, I decided to use oak leaves and acorns in my tests, because the walnut tree is not native to Britain and walnuts may not have been widely available during the early Anglo-Saxon period. I harvested the acorns and oak leaves in early Autumn and dried the leaves before use. As oak leaves and acorns are rich in tannin, no mordant is needed.
The first photo below shows colours from oak leaves. An alum or clubmoss mordant produced slightly more yellowish colours and a tannin mordant made the colours deeper. An alkaline modifier increased the depth of these colours. Mid-grey was achieved on unmordanted fibres modified in iron and a very dark grey was achieved on tannin-mordanted fibres modified in iron.
The second photo below shows colours from acorns. The comments on mordants and modifiers, made above for oak leaves, also apply to acorns. The dark grey was achieved on tannin-mordanted fibres modified in iron.
Anglo-Saxon dyes – lichen purple
/in Dyeing Tips & Recipes, General Dye InformationLichens of the species Ochrolechia and Umbilicaria give beautiful brilliant purple and red shades when treated in stale urine or a solution of water and ammonia and no mordant is required for these dyes. This purple colour seems to have been used relatively rarely by the Anglo-Saxons, probably because the lichens needed to produce it only occur in restricted regions of Britain, mainly in the North and West in hilly areas or rocky, coastal districts
Analysis of the dyes used in textiles from the early Anglo-Saxon period shows that purples from lichens were used in embroidery, narrow woven bands and accessories, such as bags and headdresses, rather than to dye larger fabrics. Bearing in mind the scarcity of purple-producing lichens in southern and eastern England, this is perhaps not surprising.
This photo gives some indication of the beautiful purples available from lichens but does not do justice to the brilliance of these colours, which sadly are not very lightfast.
I do not recommend using lichens for dyeing, except in very small test dyebaths, as lichens grow very slowly and may take a long time to regenerate. Lichens should never be harvested indiscriminately and some may be protected species and should never be gathered. It is very important to be sure you have correctly identified each lichen before even considering collecting any. However, even a small piece of lichen the size of a large coin can yield enough purple dye for most test purposes.
Purple-producing lichens are prepared by soaking them in stale urine or in a solution of 2 parts water to 1 part ammonia. Use a strong glass jar with a well-fitting lid and shake or stir the solution every day. It can take several weeks for the purple colour to develop. When the solution is a rich purple in colour, strain off the liquid into a dye pot and add the fibres to be dyed, plus more water if necessary. If you have used ammonia, make sure not to inhale any of the rather unpleasant fumes. (Stale urine can be equally unpleasant, of course!) Then heat the solution gently to simmering point and simmer gently for about 30 minutes. Take great care when heating the solution, as ammonia can catch fire very easily. Then allow the fibres to steep in the solution overnight. Then remove the fibres, squeeze the excess liquid back into the pot and re-use the solution until it is exhausted.
If the dyed fibres are steeped in an acidic modifier (for example in a solution of clear vinegar and water) they will become redder in tone. Using an alkaline modifier, such as wood-ash-water, will make the fibres more purple in tone.
The 4th skein from the left in the photo below shows some of the variations from acid and alkaline modifiers.
Anglo-Saxon dyes – weld and dyer’s broom
/in General Dye InformationWeld (Reseda luteola) and dyer's broom (Genista tinctoria) were used by Anglo-Saxon dyers for yellows and remain in use today because of their reliability. Yellow tends to be the natural-dye colour that fades most rapidly but yellows from weld have better fastness properties than most other yellow dyes. Dyer's broom has similar dye pigments to weld and also has good fastness.
The first photo below shows colours from dyer's broom and the second photo shows colours from weld. (Note: the difference in depth of colour between these two dyes is because I used a higher percentage of dyer's broom than of weld. If the same percentage of each dye is used, I would usually expect very similar depths of colour to result.)
Using an alum mordant gives the brightest yellows and clubmoss mordant produces very similar shades. If these dyes are used without a mordant the colour is considerably less bright. However, if an alkaline modifier is applied to these unmordanted dyed fibres, by soaking them in wood-ash-water, the colour becomes almost identical to the yellow achieved on an alum mordant. So, even if early dyers did not have access to mineral alum, they would still have been able to achieve bright, clear yellows from weld and dyer's broom.
The use of tannin as a mordant makes the colours deeper than they would have been without a mordant but this yellow lacks brilliance.
The use of an iron modifier after dyeing produces moss green shades on all fibres, although the green achieved on unmordanted fibres and those mordanted with tannin is duller.
Anglo-Saxon dyes – Madder
/in General Dye InformationMadder (Rubia tinctorum) is one of the most ancient dyes and a particularly useful and reliable source of red. Other plants in the madder family (Rubiaceae) include the native plants lady’s bedstraw (Galium verum), wild madder (Rubia peregrina), hedge bedstraw (Galium mollugo), dyer’s woodruff (Asperula tinctoria) and woodruff (Galium odoratum).
Although madder (Rubia tinctorum) was available during the Roman period, it seems to have been replaced during the early Anglo-Saxon period by the native Rubiaceae (for example:lady’s bedstraw and wild madder). This suggests that the Romans imported madder as a dried dyestuff, rather than growing it in Britain, and that it disappeared with the departure of the Romans. There is evidence that madder began to be imported from France in the 7th century and by the later Anglo-Saxon period it had become a very common dye.
The analysis of dyes in textiles of the early Anglo-Saxon period seems to indicate that reds, like purples, were mainly used for narrow woven bands, headdresses, embroideries and accessories, such as bags, rather than for larger fabrics. Where dyes were used in larger fabrics (and dyes were detected in only one-third of the larger fabrics analysed) these were mainly dyes that give shades of yellow, blue and brown, plus green from blue and yellow dyes used in combination. It is also possible that, at least in the early Anglo-Saxon period, reds and purples were colours reserved for people of high status.
An alum mordant is necessary for true reds from madder (Rubia tinctorum) and reds achieved on a clubmoss mordant are very similar to those achieved on fibres mordanted with mineral alum. Without a mordant, madder gives colours in the orange to coral range and using a tannin mordant gives similar but slightly deeper colours. An alkaline modifier, such as wood-ash-water, makes the colours pinker in tone and an iron modifier makes the colours browner. The addition of chopped crab apples to the dyebath makes the colours brighter.
The first photo below shows a range of shades from madder (Rubia tinctorum)
In my experience it is not easy to obtain true rich reds from lady’s bedstraw, wild madder, dyer’s woodruff and woodruff. I grew all these for several years in my old garden but never managed to get the sort of red obtained from madder, also grown in my garden. The use of an alkaline (wood-ash-water) modifier moves these colours further towards red and an iron modifier makes the colours browner. I intend to continue experimenting with these dyes in the madder family – if, that is, I can grow enough roots to make the tests worth the effort. Lady’s bedstraw grows wild at the sides of many country roads in this area but it is against the law to uproot wild plants, so I shall have to rely on my home-grown plants and it will be a while before they are mature enough to harvest.
The second photo below shows colours from wild madder roots (upper left), wild madder dried tops (4 samples at lower left) and lady’s bedstraw (right)
The third photo shows colours from woodruff roots (Galium odoratum)
Anglo-Saxon mordants
/in General Dye InformationThis is the next post about my Anglo-Saxon-style experiments.
Today’s natural dyers tend to use mainly aluminium mordants and sometimes iron and copper, which may also be used after dyeing as colour modifiers. Chrome, which was not introduced as a mordant until the 19th century, has been popular among some dyers but is avoided by many nowadays because of its toxicity. Similarly tin, which was first used as a mordant in the 17th century (mainly with cochineal to produce bright reds) is now less frequently used, partly because of environmental considerations and partly because it can make fibres brittle. Copper was used by early dyers in the Mediterranean world and also in India in the classical period AD300 – 700 but, of the metallic mordants mentioned above, only alum and iron seem to have been used by the Anglo-Saxons. It is also possible that pots made of metals, such as iron or bronze, may have been used as dyepots and this may have had an effect on the colours. However, the only evidence of dyestuffs staining pots in the early Anglo-Saxon period occurred in pots made of clay and dyeing may have frequently been carried out in clay pots, which would probably not have had a significant effect on the colours produced.
Many of the dyes used by Anglo-Saxon dyers will fix adequately without a mordant and I think it is likely that many fibres would have been dyed in this way. Some textile fragments from the period show evidence of an alum mordant and mineral alum from the Mediterranean was probably used during the later Anglo-Saxon period. However, there is some doubt as to whether this mineral alum would have been available earlier in the period, so alternative mordants may have been used, such as aluminium extracted from clubmosses. Plants rich in tannins, such as oak galls and blackberry leaves and shoots, may also have been used as mordants.
In my experiments I tested most dyes in the following ways:
As clubmosses are rare in Britain, I would not advocate their use, except in very small quantities for experimental purposes. For my tests I used the following recipe for clubmoss as a mordant:
Use 200% clubmoss (Lycopodium spp), chop it up and put it into a pot filled with water, then heat to 40C. Hold at this temperature for 3 days. On the fourth day boil it up briefly and then strain off the liquid. Add the fibres to be mordanted, heat slowly to 40C and then allow to cool Repeat this process daily for 3 days. Then remove the fibres and squeeze the excess liquid back into the solution, which can be re-used once. In order to be sure that aluminium had been extracted and then absorbed by the fibres, I used fibres mordanted with 10% mineral alum and unmordanted fibres as “controls” in the dyebath. The results were particularly clear with madder dye – the unmordanted fibres dyed to a coral shade but both the alum-mordanted and the clubmoss mordanted fibres dyed to an almost identical red shade.
In these tests I used 100% bramble/blackberry leaves and twigs as a tannin mordant. I simmered them for about one hour to extract the tannin, then strained off the liquid, added the fibres and simmered them for about 45 minutes, then left them in the liquid to cool overnight. (25% oak galls can be used instead of bramble leaves and twigs.)
I also experimented with the use of iron and wood-ash-water, which is alkaline, as colour modifiers after dyeing. It is also possible that stale urine may have been added to dyebaths and this would have increased alkalinity.
To make iron water, put some pieces of scrap iron or rusty nails in a large container with a well-fitting lid and fill it up with a solution of two parts water to one part clear vinegar. Leave the iron to steep in this solution for a week or two, until the solution is orange in colour. When you use the iron water, strain it through a fine-meshed sieve or a piece of muslin.
To make wood-ash water, put the ashes from a wood fire into a large glass or plastic container with a well-fitting lid. Fill up with water and leave the ashes to steep for a week or two, until the liquid is yellow in colour and feels slick or slimy to the touch. When you use the solution, pour or siphon it off without disturbing the ash sediment. Wood-ash water can be used as an alkaline modifier and as the source of alkali in woad vats. It can also be added to dyer’s broom and weld dyebaths to increase the depth of colour.
My experiments are intended to demonstrate some of the possible methods used by Anglo-Saxon dyers and to give an idea of the colour range they might have achieved. Although we don’t know exactly how early dyers worked, there is enough evidence to indicate that they would have been able to achieve a wide range of bright, rich colours from the relatively small number of dyes they used.
I will write about individual dyes in later posts.
Indigo workshop
/in Dyeing Tips & RecipesIt was a pleasure to return in June to the Bedfordshire Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers, of which I was a member for over thirty years before we moved to West Sussex. The occasion was an indigo workshop I was leading and I was delighted to see old friends and to meet some new members.
To demonstrate the various sources of indigo dye, I made several vats using natural indigo, synthetic indigo, woad leaves, woad balls and stored woad solution.
I used the Colour Run Remover recipe given in my books with the synthetic indigo. However, as Colour Run Remover is not always easy to find in powder form (the liquid form isn’t suitable for indigo vats), I decided to try a different method with natural indigo. I was looking for a simple method and, after some experimentation, it seemed that using equal quantities of indigo powder, washing soda and sodium hydrosulphite (hydros) would work well. An added advantage is that using equal amounts of each ingredient makes this a very simple recipe. As indigo reduces better in a more concentrated solution, I decided to make a stock solution on the day before the workshop. To do this, I mixed 4 teaspoons of natural indigo powder with very hot water to make a paste. Then I dissolved 4 teaspoons of washing soda in very hot water in a strong glass jar, added the indigo paste and stirred well. I added more hot water until the glass jar was just over three-quarters full then, after checking that the temperature was not above 50C, I carefully stirred in 4 teaspoons of hydros and put the lid on the jar. I then placed the jar in a saucepan of very hot water and put this on a hotplate overnight. In the morning I checked the pH and added more washing soda to bring it to pH9. The solution looked a murky greenish yellow at this stage. When I arrived at the workshop, I filled a stainless steel bucket with very hot water (but no hotter than 50C) and added 2 teaspoons of washing soda and two teaspoons of hydros. I then gently added the contents of the glass jar. The vat was allowed to stand for about 20 minutes until the liquid below the surface was a clear greeny/yellow. (If this seems to be taking too long, add some more hydros.) This vat is very simple to make and worked well. However, I intend to experiment further to see if I can improve on this method.
Both of the indigo vats produced dark blues immediately and those students who wanted paler blues had to wait until some of the blue had been used before dyeing their samples. I also suggested that the wool samples should be dyed first, while the vats were hot, and that the cotton and silk samples should be dyed later, when the vats had cooled down. This is because wool takes up the indigo dye better in a hot solution, while cotton and linen prefer cooler solutions.
With the woad balls I used the recipe given in the revised edition of “Wild Colour” and also in an earlier post on this blog. Unfortunately, the woad balls only produced a pale blue and not enough for all the workshop participants to dye their samples. I think the balls probably needed to steep for a longer period than we had available. We also had limited success with the fresh woad leaves, which gave very little colour. However, I suppose this was to be expected, as June is really too early to harvest the first year leaves, which hadn’t had enough time to develop their colouring potential. The woad solution, which gave deep to mid blues, was from 2008 and worked very well, so this proves (if proof is necessary) that correctly-prepared woad solution can be stored successfully for several years. The recipes I used for these two woad vats were those in my books.
The photos below show some of the materials dyed by students at the workshop.