History of Natural Dyes - Color in Culture

Since textiles (materials from woven fabrics) were invented around 6000 BCE, humans have been finding ways to color them. Before textiles were woven, people wore animal hides softened with alum (from rocks) or tannic acid (from oak trees).

Dyes are different from pigments (used in paint) in that the dye molecules chemically bond to the textile rather than just coat it. Fabrics are soaked in liquid dye, sometimes with a mordant which acts like a chemical glue that sticks the dye to the fabric. Alum and tannic acid were two of the first mordants along with urine, vinegar and other substances.

Fast dyes are those that fasten well to cloth and resist fading. Direct dyes don't require a mordant. Some dyes are a different colour when soaking and the final colour develops later. Indigo is colourless when soaking and the fabric turns yellow, then blue with exposure to air.

Purple-dyed cloth was once considered to be a treasure equal to jewels and precious metals. The ancient Phoenicians dyed cloth purple using sea snails. By the ninth century, the only purple dye works left were in Constantinople and purple was rarer and more expensive than ever. After the Turks invaded Constantinople in 1453, the ancient secret of the purple snail dye was lost forever.

Red cloth was also expensive in ancient times. Kermes dye was a deep red dye that came from insects. The insects could only be harvested once a year when the females were ready to lay eggs. Kermes dye was first made in India and Persia (now Iran). The knowledge that Kermes came from an insect, not plants was a closely guarded secret.

Dying was big business in the Mediterranean in the first millennium BCE. Archeologists unovered the remains of dye shops in Pompeii, an Italian city buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. Over the doorway of one shop was a carving of Mercury, the god of commerce holding a bag of money and the words salve, lucrum meaning, 'welcome, profit.'

Dyes weren't just for textiles. The Egyptians used a plant-based dye called henna to redden their hair.

The Chinese invented silk cloth and silk flags. Flags were used in ancient China and India and were quickly adopted by the Middle East.

In China, from 1644-1911, only the emperor could wear yellow, the colour of the sun and only the crown prince wore orange. Other members of the royal household could wear bright blue, red and purple. Anyone else wore dull clothing.

In England in the 16th century, only royalty was allowed to wear red, purple or blue and silk or velvet.

The ancient Greeks and Romans considered purple to be the noblest colour. Only the emperors were permitted to wear purple from 300 BCE until after 500 CE. By then purple was the colour of the high-ranking Christian clergy too.

After the secret of purple dye using sea snails was lost, the pope decreed that bright red was the favoured color of royalty.  

Red was considered the colour of healing and English physicians wore red cloaks until the 19th century. The British army had its military uniforms dyed with cochineal red.

Around 500 CE, after the fall of the Roman Empire, only small quantities of dyes and dyed silks were shipped to Europe. These were so expensive that only nobility could afford them. The peasants wore drab clothing for hundreds of years.

The ancient Aztecs in New Spain (as Mexico was called) used cochineal insects from a prickly pear cactus to produce a deep red dye. Cochineal dye was ten times stronger than kermes dye.

By the late 16th century, cochineal was the third most valuable export after gold and silver. France paid so much gold to Spain for cochineal that a French botanist stole live insects and cacti in 1777.

So much gold and silver went to India for brightly coloured calico from India in the 17th century, that calico was banned in Europe.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, indigo, the color of blue jeans and police uniforms was banned in parts of Europe for being the 'devil's dye'.

The first synthetic dye to be commercialized was mauve in 1857 by a young English chemist student, Perkins. Alizarine red was synthesized next.

The Germans synthesized indigo in 1880 and Germany was producing 80% of the worlds dyes by 1914.

Early synthetics were made with arsenic, which made people sick. Synthetic dyes were made with coal tar, then crude oil.

Consumers loved synthetics - synthetic dyes were cheap and produced consistent colours. More predictable and consistent colours were obtained with synthetics. Coloured textiles were no longer only for the wealthy.

Natural dye companies went out of business because they couldn't compete with the new synthetics.

Today, nearly all fabric is coloured with synthetic dyes. Dyes are also used to colour hair and even food.

References: From Sea Snails to Synthetics, Ruth Kassinger

Dyes, Paints and Adhesives, Brian Knapp