It was once gown in Britain as a commercial dye plant, red pigment in the root. It is a relative of the bedstraws and close to one of the worst arable weeds in the UK (cleavers). Madder Rubia tinctorum is a perennial that overwinters and comes up each May but never grows into much. They give a yellow dye as shown colouring wool in the panel above. The leaf and stem are harvested and dry to a light straw. Weld is commonly biennial, germinating and forming a base of leaves in one year then extending and flowering the next. Weld Reseda luteola is now uncommon in farmland but appears on wasteland, particularly in towns, where it tends to last a year or so before being sprayed. A small, cultivated bed holds woad, madder, tansy, chamomile, coreopsis, alkanet, weld and greenweed. The hedges hold a few of the perennial woody plants, and the meadow a few of the herbs, such as lady’s bedstraw. The garden keeps about fifteen species that have been grown or collected at some time in the croplands to make dyestuffs. Yet still in a few places, in certain forms of craft work and where the subtlety of natural colour is appreciated, dye plants find their place.ĭespite their lack of commercial value today, there is something about dye plants that has a fascination – we would not have known about the cabbagy woad, the stunning composite coreopsis, the broom-like greenweed, and the red-relative of the noxious weed cleavers – not all easy to germinate and grow to say the least – if we had not been tempted to explore the natural dye plants that had been cropped or imported here over the past few thousand years. In turn, these tropical dyes were ousted in the 1900s by industrially made pigments and most commercial dye cropping in Britain ceased around 100 years ago, as did much of the import trade in natural dyes from around the world. Dye plants in the garden – (upper) dyer’s chamomile in the pot, seeding woad, (middle) birch trunk, rhubarb, dyer’s coreopsis flowers, (bottom) weld flowering stems, lady’s bedstraw (Living Field collection) The tropical legume, indigo, supplanted woad as the blue dye of choice in the late 1800s, and local plants could not compete with the imported red-sorghum, brazil wood and the insect-based cochineal. Much later, a few dye plants were grown as crops, including woad for a time but the strong natural dye colours came from hot countries. Lichens, the bark of shrubs and trees, oak galls, whins (Ulex), berries, nettles, all were used to add some colour. Plant dyes had been used in the croplands well before the first crops came here. Presented with some leaves and roots of indigo or woad, who today would think they concealed such rich natural blues, and how can the weak greens and browns of madder, sorghum and brazilwood conceal their depths of red. And the plants and parts are not obvious. People living at the sharp end – hunting to sustain themselves or growing the first crops – had the curiosity to see which plants and which plant parts held natural dyes. Whether for vanity, art, craft, industry – people have found plants that produce colour if treated in certain ways and colour that sticks for a time in fibres or wood. Mohammad, Dyes Pigm., 95, 53 (2012).Natural dyes have been around for a long time. Sakhai, “Persian Rugs and Carpets: The Fabric of Life”, Antique Collectors’ Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, 2008. Kozlowski, “Handbook of Natural Fibres”, Vol. Ali Khan, Textiles and Clothing Sustainability, 2, 1 (2016). Fastness properties (light, wash, and rub fastness) of wool dyed with combination of YM and BM were good. The superior color strength of wool fibers dyed with 4 %YM+6 %BM and 40 % madder was featured by K/S value of 35.77 and was obviously higher than that of madder by sumac, 9.5. FTIR-ATR spectra of the washed, mordanted, and mordanted-dyed wool fibers confirmed appropriate bonding among wool fibers, green mordant, and dye molecules. In this study, Iranian madder was used as green dye and Yellow Myrobalan (YM) and Black Myrobalan (BM) employed as biomordant. We introduce the idea of using combination of natural mordant as a new technique for sustainable dyeing of wool and a model natural fiber. Tannin-based biomordants appeared advantageous in green dyeing meanwhile, unconditional affinity towards fibers of different types has attracted the attention of researchers. Application of biomordants was recommended to enhance the quality of dyeing. Nowadays, using sustainable dyeing process has become a necessity, but does not meet performance requirements.
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