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.
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.