DYES OF THE ANCIENTS
So far as we can tell, the art of dyeing is an extremely ancient one. It seems to have developed in every country and to have been practised by every race of mankind, as soon as that race ceased to rely exclusively upon the skins of fur-bearing animals for clothing and coverings. Wherever we find people using woven goods, whether vegetable, like cotton or linen, or animal, like wool or silk—or wherever, as in the case of the North American Indians, they have learned the art of dressing skins so as to make them soft, pliable, and with a comparatively smooth surface, we find at least the rudiments of the process of dyeing, in the staining of these materials to add to their beauty and interest.
Vegetable Dyes.—The earliest dyes were probably of vegetable origin, discovered by accidentally staining garments with juices of fruits or plants. Thus, for instance, in the Bible we read of “garments dyed in the blood of grapes”; and we can all call to mind fruits in common use—blackberries, huckleberries, peaches, and the like, whose juice could be used, if nothing better presented itself, to dye or stain light-colored fabrics.
In most cases, as in those just mentioned, the colors would be fugitive, and after a short time become dull and uninteresting. But in the process of time vegetable dyes were discovered, in one part and another of the world, which, in the hands of those who knew how to work with them, gave colors both fast and beautiful. And thus grew and developed the art of the professional dyer.
For instance, in many widely separated countries, such as India, Java, South and Central America, plants are found, known asindigoferae, whose juices, yellow when fresh, rapidly turn blue when exposed to the air. These juices impart a rich and permanent blue stain to objects moistened with them while they are still yellow; and this blue is the coloring matter known as indigo. The plants bearing it have been cultivated for hundreds, if not, indeed, thousands of years, and used for dyeing.
Garments and blankets found in the so-called Inca graves in Peru and Chili, dating from long before the Spanish conquest, as well as the oldest specimens of Hindoo workmanship, and even some of the textiles found in the tombs of Egypt, all show examples of this same dyestuff. It was so valuable that, in small quantities and at vast expense, it was imported by the Romans from India, as is shown by its Latin name, Indicum (Indian), from which its present name, indigo, is directly derived.
But, curiously enough, exactly the same dyestuff, but in a very impure form, and derived from an entirely different plant, theisatis tinctoria, commonly known aswoad, has been discovered and used in Western Europe from time immemorial. And when Julius Cæsar, nearly two thousand years ago, led a Roman army for the first time across the channel into England, he found the native Britons adorning themselves by smearing their bodies with a dirty blue dyestuff obtained from this source.
So, little by little, the knowledge of these natural dyestuffs and their application grew and expanded. But as a matter of fact, so far at least as can be gathered from the old writers, those known and used by the ancient Greeks and Romans were few in number and of comparatively little interest.
For blues they were obliged to use the inferior color derived, as above mentioned, from the native woad, excepting when, for some special purposes, a little indigo was imported from the East at enormous expense.
Their principal yellow dyestuff was saffron, which is derived from the flowers of the common yellow crocus. This gives pleasant, warm shades of golden yellow, not fast, however, to either light or washing. This same saffron, though long since entirely abandoned as a dyestuff, is still used in small quantities for staining candy and foodstuffs, and occasionally for medicinal purposes.
The ancients are believed to have discovered the dyeing properties of the roots of madder—rubia tinctorum—(the dyer’s root), and to have used it in small quantities for producing purple and brown and, possibly, even red shades, on cotton and wool. Whether, however, the art of dyeing the brilliant crimson and scarlet shades known as Turkey red was ever worked out before the Middle Ages, is extremely doubtful.
Animal Dyes.—Unquestionably the best red dyes known to the people of those early times were of animal origin, and were used for various shades of red and of purple.
Kermes.—One of these, called kermes, is very closely related to the more important and, up to a few years ago, the very generally used, cochineal, and to the lac dye.
These three dyestuffs—kermes, cochineal, and lac—come to the market in the form of little dark colored grains, which, when ground up with hot water, give a bright red solution called carmine, which contains a considerable amount of a coloring known as carminic acid. When wool or silk that has been previously mordanted—that is, impregnated with chemical agents; in this case salts of tin, aluminium, iron, or copper—is boiled in one of these solutions, it becomes scarlet, crimson, purple, or claret color, according to the mordant employed. From the appearance and form, as they come to market, of these dyestuffs, the shades thus derived are commonly known as the “grain colors.”
When these granules are soaked for some time in warm water they swell, and their true character becomes apparent. They consist of the dried bodies of small insects, known as “cocci” (berries), which are carefully cultivated on particular kinds of trees or shrubs and when full grown are brushed off and dried for market. They are very small—the cochineal grains, which are the most important, running about 70,000 to the pound.
Kermes, which was the only one of the three known to the old Greeks and Romans, consists of the dried bodies of the “coccus ilicis,” a variety of the insect which lives on a species of oak, and which, it is said, is still occasionally used in Southern Europe, and in Morocco, for dyeing leather and wool.
Tyrian Purple.—The most highly prized ancient dyestuff, and one concerning which much interest has always been felt, was the so-called “Tyrian purple.” This was obtained from the juices of certain species of snails found in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and, indeed, in the ocean waters of many other warm climates. Two species of this class—themurex Brandaris and themurex trunculus—were used extensively by the ancients, and great mounds of their shells, such for instance as the so-called Monte Testaccio at Tarentum, are still found along the shores at places famous, in old days, for their dyeing establishments.
Other shellfish of the same general type, known aspurpura lapillus, are found quite abundantly, not only in the Mediterranean, but also on our own coast and along the shores of Central and South America. They have been used by the natives in Nicaragua and elsewhere, from time immemorial, for obtaining a similar color.
Purpura lapillus Murex trunculus Murex Brandaris
These shellfish were so much sought after in the old days that, by the time of the early Middle Ages, they were almost exterminated, and the dye disappeared from commerce entirely. But, long before that, in the early days of the Roman Empire, the coloring matter was so expensive that fabulous sums were paid for cloth or yarns dyed with it, and its use was practically confined to the imperial family. In fact one of the imperial titles in the Eastern empire—purpureogenitus, “born to the purple”—was due to this fact.
Some interesting information upon the value set on this dyestuff by the ancients is afforded by the so-called Edict of Diocletian, fragments of which, engraved on stone tablets, have been found in different parts of the old Roman Empire, ranging from Egypt to Asia Minor. By this edict, issued in A.D. 301, the emperor Diocletian attempted to fix the market price of the principal articles of commerce, for the Eastern empire. According to this, the price of wool, heavily dyed with this color, was worth about $350 a pound, in gold.
The dyestuff, as we learn from the description of the process by ancient writers, was obtained from a whitish or yellowish liquid found, two or three drops at a time, in a particular vein in the body of these animals. This juice, when exposed to air and especially to sunshine, forms the purple or violet color, much in the some manner that the blue color of indigo is formed from the yellow juice of the indigo plant.
The shellfish in question, having for many centuries been left undisturbed, are now quite common in the waters of the Mediterranean, and are occasionally to be found in the poorer quarters of Venice and other Italian seaports, exposed for sale as food.
A year or two ago a German color chemist, famous for his discovery of the brilliant and extremely permanent reddish violet dyestuff, known as Thio Indigo red B., made a careful investigation to see whether, by any chance, this color of his might happen to be the same as the famous old Tyrian purple.
He managed to secure some twelve thousand specimens ofmurex Brandaris, and, with an immense amount of labor, obtained from these twelve thousand specimens about twenty-one grains of pure dyestuff. This he carefully analyzed and experimented with, until finally he was able to prove that, while it was not identical with his own Thio Indigo red dyestuff—which, as the name shows, is a compound of indigo and sulphur—the Tyrian purple was a similar compound of the same indigo dyestuff, with the comparatively rare acid element, bromine. In fact it is what the chemists would call a brom-indigo; and this same famous chemist, Dr. Friedlaender, of Biebrich on the Rhine, after discovering its composition, amused himself by manufacturing some of it artificially; and, with the artificial reproduction of the ancient Tyrian purple, he dyed some skeins of silk, as an illustration to his article detailing his discovery.
Now, if there were any truth in the theory of the superlative value and beauty of these ancient dyestuffs, it is evident that this rediscovery of the true and genuine Tyrian purple would have been a matter of great practical importance. On the assumption that one pound of dyestuff would color at least twenty pounds of wool, this would put the price of the dye itself, in Diocletian’s day, at a pretty high figure.
It can now be manufactured, at a profit, for not over one one-thousandth of what it cost in those days, not allowing, either, for the difference in value of money between then and now. And yet this famous dye, which was so highly esteemed and of which so much has been written, is so inferior in color and tone to several of the modern dyestuffs that it probably would not pay to put it on the market. Dr. Friedlaender’s samples were, indeed, fast to both light and washing, but their color showed dull and, to modern eyes, distinctly uninteresting shades of violet. And there are already on the market several violet, red and blue dyes of the same general class—the indigo or vat dyes—which are quite as fast to light and washing, and far superior in beauty and brilliancy of shade.
It is only proper, however, to state that Dr. Friedlaender’s investigation did not completely clear up the subject, though there is no question but that he really discovered the true Tyrian purple; and the color of the specimens dyed and exhibited by him corresponded very closely to some still surviving from antiquity.
Among the fine collections of textiles from the Egyptian tombs that are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, are some excellent examples of Tyrian purple. These are what the Greeks used to call “di-bapha,” or double dyed—i.e., dyed very deep, full shades of dark purple. While a wonderful example of the lighter, violet, shades of the same dye can be seen in a famous manuscript, known as “The Golden Gospels,” now in Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan’s collection in the same city, but which was given about 1520, by Pope Leo X to King Henry VIII. This was written, in golden characters, upon vellum dyed with Tyrian purple, and the shades of the latter correspond quite closely with the violet of the artificial brom-indigo compound.
On the other hand there is evidence to show that the ancients were also able to obtain, with the same Tyrian purple dye, perhaps from the shellfishpurpura lapillus, fast and brilliant shades of scarlet, as well as these rather dull tones of violet and purple. In the days of the Roman Empire, as above mentioned, the use of “purple” garments was denied to all but the imperial family; but later, after the rise of the Christian Church, the ecclesiastics gained sufficient power to obtain this privilege for themselves. And to this day the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church are called “porporati” on account of the “purple” or, as we would say, scarlet, color of their characteristic robes. So, whenever we see the red robes of a high dignitary of the church we are probably looking at one of the tints of the real old Tyrian purple, although the art of actually producing it has long since been lost; and, if rediscovered, would probably be of as little practical value as Dr. Friedlaender’s remarkable investigation.