Ethel Mairet

“ Cotton has a natural attraction for tannic acid, so that when once steeped in its solution it is not easily removed by washing.
ALUM
This is the most generally used of all the mordants, and has been known as such from early times in many parts of the world. For most colours a certain proportion of cream of tartar should be added to the alum bath as it helps to [Pg 8] brighten the ultimate colour. The usual amount of alum is a quarter of a pound to a pound of wool. As a rule, less mordant is needed for light colours than for dark. Excess of alum is apt to make the wool sticky. ”

“ Catechu is another excellent cotton dye used for various shades of brown, grey and black. A cold indigo vat is used for blue, Indigo Extract is not used. Yellows can be got with weld, flavin, turmeric (for which cotton has a strong attraction) , and fustic. Great care is to be taken in dyeing yellow as it is not very fast to light. Greens may be got by dyeing in the indigo vat and then with a yellow recipe, purples from logwood with tin mordant, but purples and greens are unsatisfactory, and not suitable to the vegetable dyer. ”

“ Some of the chemical colours as well as the natural, are not fast to light and washing, and ought never to be used; but there are natural colours, such as madder, some of the lichens, catechu etc., which are as fast as any chemical dye, if not more so. BUT there is this general difference between the results of the two methods,—that when a chemical colour fades it becomes a different colour and generally a bad one: when a natural colour fades, it becomes a lighter tone of the same colour. ”

“ With Bichromate of Potash as mordant, Old Fustic gives old gold colour. With alum it gives yellow, inclining to lemon yellow. The brightest yellows are got from it by mordanting with tin. With copper sulphate it yields olive colours (4 to 5 per cent copper sulphate and 3 to 4 per cent tartar) . With ferrous sulphate darker olives are obtained (8 per cent ferrous sulphate) . For silk it does not produce as bright yellows as weld, but can be used for various shades of green and olive. Prolonged dyeing should always be avoided, as the yellows are apt to become brownish and dull. ”

“ From a Dye Book of 1705.—"Black may be compared to Night and Death, not only because all other colours are deepened and buried in the Black Dye, but that as Death puts an end to all Evils of Life, tis necessary that the Black Dye should remedy the faults of other colours, which have been occasioned by the deficiency of the Dyer or the Dye, or the change of Fashion according to the times and caprice of man." ”

“ The grey Lichen, Ramalina scopulorum dyes a fine shade of yellow brown. It grows very plentifully on old stone walls, especially by the sea, and in damp woods, on trees, and on old rotten wood. Boil the Lichen up in sufficient water one day, and the next put in the wool, and boil up again till [Pg 17] the right colour is got. If the wool is left in the dye for a day or more after boiling it absorbs more colour, and it does not hurt the wool but leaves it soft and silky to the touch, though apt to be uneven in colour. Some mordant the wool first with alum, but it does not seem to need it. ”

“ The dye house should be by a river or stream, so that the dyer can wash with a continuous supply. Spring and well water is as a rule hard, and should be avoided. In washing, as well as in dyeing, hard water is altogether injurious for wool. It ruins the brilliancy of colour, and prevents the dyeing of some colours. Temporary hardness can be overcome by boiling the water (20 to 30 minutes) before using. An old method of purifying water, which is still used by some silk and wool scourers, is to boil the water with a little soap, skimming off the surface as it boils. ”

“ As indigo does not penetrate easily, every effort must be made to help it to do so. The stuff to be dyed must be thoroughly scoured so that no particle of grease, size, or any other impurity is present. Every effort must be made to prevent unreduced indigo from attaching itself to the cotton. Never begin to dye in a vat which is greenish. The unreduced indigo will attach itself to the stuff and be wasted. ”

“ In this 20th century the importance of colour in our lives seems to be realized less and less. It has been forgotten that strong and beautiful colour, such as used to abound in all every day things, is an essential to the full joy of life. A sort of fear or nervousness of bright colour is one of the features of our age, it is especially evident in the things we wear. ”

“ The only Lichen dyes that are known generally among dyers are Orchil and Cudbear, and these are preparations of lichens, not the lichens themselves. They are still used in some quantity and are prepared rather elaborately. But a great many of the ordinary lichens yield very good and permanent dyes. The Parmelia saxatilis and Parmelia omphalodes, are largely used in the Highlands and West Ireland, for dyeing brown of all shades. No mordant is needed, and the colours produced are the fastest known. ”

“ Black is best made by dyeing dark blue wool with brown; and walnut is better than iron for the brown part, because the iron-brown is apt to rot the fibre; as you will see in some pieces of old tapestry, or old Persian carpets, where the black is quite perished, or at least in the case of the carpet—gone down to the knots. All intermediate shades of flesh colour can be got by means of weak baths of madder and walnut "saddening;" madder or cochineal mixed with weld gives us orange, and with saddening (walnut) all imaginable shades between yellow and red, including the ambers, maize-colour, etc." ”

“ We fear bright colour because our modern colours are bad, and they are bad because the tradition of dyeing has been broken. The chemist has invaded the domain of the dyer, driven him out and taken over his business, with the result that ugly colour has become the rule for the first time in the history of mankind. It is not that chemists never produce 2 beautiful colour. ”

“ Waste silk is the silk from cocoons that are damaged 17 in some way so that they cannot be reeled off direct. They are therefore carded and spun, like wool or cotton.
Silk in the raw state is covered with a silk gum which must be boiled off before dyeing is begun. It is tied up in canvas bags and boiled up in a strong solution of soap for three or four hours until all the gum is boiled off. If it is yellow gum, the silk is wrought first in a solution of soft soap at a temperature just below boiling point for about an hour, then put into bags and boiled. ”

“ Dealing with exactly known quantities, and striving for precise uniformity, the chemist has no use for the accidents and irregularities which the artist's imagination seizes and which the traditional worker well knew how to use. ”

“ Every piece of craft work should be an adventure. It cannot be an adventure if commerce steps in and says "I will dye all your yarn for you; you will always then be able to match your colour again; there need be no variation; every skein shall be as all the others; you can order so many pounds of such a number and you can get it by return of post; and you can have six or seven hundred shades to choose from." It is all so easy, so temptingly easy,—but 7 how DULL! the deadly yards of stuff all so even and so exactly dyed ”

“ The chalk does not merely answer the purpose of decomposing the acid left in the wool by the sulphate of indigo, but it helps to raise the colour and to render it more durable."
According to Bancroft, Quercitron is the yellow above all others for dyeing greens. He says:—
"The most beautiful Saxon greens may be produced very cheaply and expeditiously by combining the lively yellow which results from Quercitron bark, murio sulphate of tin and alum, with the blue afforded by indigo when dissolved in sulphuric acid, as for dyeing the Saxon blue". ”

“ Sufficient time must be allowed for the mordant to penetrate the fibre thoroughly. If the mordant is only superficial, the dye will be uneven: it will fade and will not be as brilliant as it should be. The brilliancy and fastness of Eastern dyes are probably due to a great extent to the length of time taken over the various processes of dyeing. The longer time that can be given to each process, the more satisfactory will be the result.
Different mordants give different colours with the same dye stuff. For example:—Cochineal, if 35 mordanted with alum, will give a crimson colour ”

“ For a good bright green, dye the wool a rather light blue, then wash and dry; green it with a good yellow dye, such as weld or fustic, varying the proportion of each according to the shade of green required. Heather tips, dyer's broom, dock roots, poplar leaves, saw wort are also good yellows for dyeing green. If Indigo Extract is used for the blue, fustic is the best yellow for greening, its colour is less affected by the sulphuric acid than other yellows. ”

“ A few of the natural dye stuffs are capable of dyeing cotton direct, without a mordant, such as Turmeric, Barberry bark, safflower, annatto. For other dyes cotton has a special attraction, such as catechu, fustic, logwood.
ON LINEN.—Linen is flax, derived from the decomposed stalks of a plant of the genus of Linum. It grows chiefly in Russia, Belgium, France, Holland, and Ireland. The plants after being gathered are subjected to a process called "retting", which separates the fibre from the decaying part of the plant. ”

“ Among these are Ladies Bedstraw, whortleberry, yellow iris, bracken, bramble, meadow sweet, alder, heather and many others. The yellow dyes are the most plentiful, and many of these are good fast colours. Practically no good red, in quantity, is obtainable. Madder is the only reliable red dye among plants, and that is no longer indigenous in England. Most of the dye plants require a preparation of the material to be dyed, with alum, or some other mordant, but a few, such as Barberry, and some of the lichens, are substantive dyes, and require no mordant. ”