PREFACE
When a new text-book is offered to an innocent and long-suffering public about such an ancient subject as Dyes and Dyeing, it is, perhaps, the very least that the author can do, to explain briefly his reasons for hoping that his particular book may prove of some special usefulness.
As a matter of fact this book is intended for the use of craftsmen and others who are trying to dye and stain textiles by hand and on a small scale, rather than for professional dyers or dyeing chemists who are interested in factory dyeing, conducted on a large scale. For the latter there is little or no difficulty in getting any information that they desire, either from the large and carefully written text-books or, still better, from the many excellent dyeing manuals and books of directions issued at frequent intervals by the great color houses.
But for craftsmen and their like, the amateur dyers as opposed to the regular professionals, the required information is not easy to obtain. Their leaders and teachers, as a rule, profess a scorn of the wonderful discoveries which, in the last half century, have revolutionized the art of dyeing more, perhaps, than any other branch of handicraft. And the dyeing chemists and writers have devoted themselves almost exclusively to the far larger and more important and more profitable field of commercial or professional dyeing, and only here and there is one found who has given any special attention to the dyes and processes needed by those working only on a small scale.
For my own part, after teaching the principles and practice of modern dyeing to class after class of chemical students at Columbia, my attention was called to this particular branch of the subject by finding, one spring, that some friends had started a hand-weaving industry at a settlement house in which I was interested, but had not made any arrangement for a dyehouse at the same time. This was a serious omission because it is almost impossible to buy in the market raw materials for hand-woven rugs, table-covers, and the like, that are dyed just the right shade and, at the same time, are fast to both light and washing; and, unless this last is guaranteed, there is little or no excuse for charging the large prices necessary to pay for the extra expense of the hand labor.
Wishing, therefore, to help out my friends, I offered to assist as far as possible in this part of the work. That summer was spent on the St. Lawrence, where it was possible to study some of the textile work of the Frenchhabitants whose dyeing processes, designs, and looms had descended from mother to daughter since the old Colonial days; and in the autumn I fitted up a little dyehouse and started with a small but intelligent class of neighbors who were working at the looms.
Of course, it was foolish to attempt to teach them the scientific chemical formulæ used by my students uptown. The processes must be short and simple—must give the desired shades on cotton, linen, wool, and silk in the course of an hour or an hour and a half at the outside, counting from the time when the class was called to order. And the colors must be absolutely fast to light, and, wherever possible, to washing also.
The work was very interesting and proved successful enough, at least as far as the dyeing went. After a few months some visiting reporter, in an article on Greenwich House and its industries, mentioned the dyeing, in a magazine, and stated that the colors resulting were not only beautiful but fast. Immediately I was bombarded with letters from all over the country, begging for information about permanent dyestuffs to be used for hand-woven textiles. Requests came from friends and acquaintances to help them in various side branches of the subject, such as feather dyeing, leather dyeing and staining, stencilling, tied and dyed work, and, above all, Batik. And it soon became a source of much interest to look up some old process of dyeing, originating perhaps in the East, perhaps among the ancient Egyptians, and to work it out with the best modern dyestuffs.
Finally, my correspondence grew so burdensome that I arranged with the well-known New York magazine, The Craftsman, for a series of articles upon “Modern Dyestuffs and Dyeing Processes for the Use of Craftsmen”; and from these articles the present book is a natural result.
It is hoped that it will prove useful, not only for individuals who are trying, under considerable difficulties, to get satisfactory results, by means of long-abandoned processes, upon textile materials of many sorts and kinds, but also for teachers of art in our public as well as private schools. Much attention is being given now to training the hands of children in various drawing and decorating and weaving processes. But the modern dyestuffs give a much greater opportunity to train their eyes to a sense of color and to its beauties, as well as giving them an introduction into an art which can be used at home for most useful as well as beautiful purposes.
My hearty thanks are due to many friends, notably, to Mr. Philip Clarkson, head chemist of H. A. Metz & Co., to Dr. Ludwig, of the Cassella Color Co., and to many other expert dyeing chemists, who have most kindly helped me with advice and information about many widely varying branches of the subject. Also to many of my craftsman friends, notably Mrs. C. L. Banks, of Bridgeport, Conn., and Mrs. Charlotte Busck, of this city, who have been of the greatest assistance in working out many of the problems involved in stencilling and Batik; and to Miss Mary Grey, of Hackettstown, N. J., who has kindly allowed me to insert an illustration of some of her interesting and well-designed tied work (Fig. [7]). It is my earnest hope that the information contained in this book may encourage and assist other craftsmen throughout the country to come up to the high standard of these skilled textile workers.
C. E. P.
Chapter I
INTRODUCTION
There has been so much said and written about the beauty and value of the old-fashioned dyestuffs and dyeing processes and their superiority to the modern coloring matters, that many well-meaning people of artistic tastes have never ceased to deplore the discovery and introduction of the so-called aniline or coal-tar dyes, and to regard them as a serious detriment to the art of dyeing.
Some, indeed, have gone so far as to decry the discoveries not only of the last fifty years, but also of the last nineteen or twenty centuries. These quote with approval the great John Ruskin, founder and original leader of the whole Arts and Crafts movement in England, if not in the world, as having said, “There has been nothing discovered of the slightest interest in the tinctorial art” (the art of dyeing) “since the days of the ancient Greeks and Romans.”
To suppose for an instant that this important and highly specialized art has not advanced during nearly two thousand years is, on the face of it, absurd. A very little knowledge of dyestuffs forces recognition of the fact that many of the very best, fastest, and most beautiful of the dyes of our ancestors—such as cochineal, with which they dyed practically all of their fast pinks and scarlets; logwood, with which silk as well as wool was, and is still dyed black; fustic, which was used for fast yellows on wool and cotton, and several others—were natives of America, and therefore only known to the world at large since the seventeenth century.
Indeed, as we shall see, the art of dyeing, based as it is on chemical processes, discovered one by one, but never properly explained or understood until the last sixty or seventy years, is, perhaps, the one art above all others in which not only the ancient world, but the world of comparatively a few years ago, was very distinctly inferior to that of the present day.
In drawing, sculpture, painting, architecture, ceramics, wood-carving, lacemaking, metal working, and almost every other art that can be mentioned, the craftsman of the Middle Ages, if not indeed of ancient Rome or Greece, could still hold his place against modern competitors. Even in such a modern art as book printing, the lover of books will claim, with considerable reason, that no more beautiful or more nearly perfect specimen of the printer’s art has ever been produced than the Gutenberg Bible, the first product of the European printing press.
The art of dyeing, however, has been changing and developing so much from century to century, that, even before the wonderful discoveries of the last fifty years, the effects produced by any one generation of dyers would have been totally impossible for their ancestors of a few generations before them.
It would seem hardly worth while to dwell further upon this subject, were not the idea so fixed in the minds of craftsmen in general that to get permanent and artistic effects in dyeing we must go back to the colors of our ancestors, if not to those of the ancient world. To this day we hear of new industries being started in the lines of hand-made tapestries, hand-woven linens, homespun cloths, and the like, where, as a great inducement to prospective purchasers, the goods are loudly proclaimed as dyed with “pure vegetable colors”; and the first question commonly asked about a pretty piece of dyed work is, “Are you sure that it is fast? Did you use the vegetable dyes?”
As a result of this ignoring and scorning of the wonderful results of modern science in its application to this most important industry, the work of textile craftsmen all over the world is far behind the times, and comparatively far behind other lines of craftwork.
Nobody expects a modern sculptor to do his carving with the bronze tools used by the old Athenians; nor do we consider that the present day worker in metals should refrain from using the modern gas furnace, or limit his products to the few metals and alloys known in the Middle Ages, ignoring those which modern chemistry has developed. And yet, all over the world, craftsmen are still pottering with long since obsolete dyestuffs and obscure and antiquated formulæ, instead of spending their energies in getting, with the minimum expenditure of time and trouble, results of a quality never dreamed of by the most skilful dyers of half a century ago.
As a matter of fact, so far from Mr. Ruskin’s estimate of the value of ancient dyes being correct, it is actually no more than fair to say that hardly a single dyeing process, known and used more than fifty years ago, is of the slightest practical importance now to any one.