Transcript Weld dyeing - Eu

Dyeing wool and silk
with weld (Reseda luteola L.)
Maarten van Bommel
Marjolein Groot Wassink
Weld dyeing
Recipe:
- Lab recipe or original, 17th century recipe?
- Mordants used?
- Conditions applied?
Do you want to obtain a
specific colour or a reproducible recipe?
Weld dyeing
Material
Weld (Reseda luteola L.) from Anjou (south of France)
- 10 kg
- Chopped plant material
Stem
Leaves
Flowers
No roots
How to sample!
- Deionised water was used
- Chemicals of analytical grade
Weld dyeing
Lab recipe based on historical recipes
- Both wool and silk were dyed
- Only alum was used as mordant
- Variation in the use of potash (potassium carbonate)
- About half of recipes found described the use
of potash to “extract the dye from the plant”
Mordanting
Recipe:
- 10.3 gram alum
- 3.44 gram cream of tartar
- 2.5 litre water
- 50 gram silk
For wool all values were doubled.
- Boil for 1 hour
- Cool down
- Rinsed in streaming water
Samples were taken prior to and directly after mordanting
Dyeing
Wool
- 50 gram weld in cotton bag
- 6.25 gram potash
- 2.5 litre water
- boiled for 30 minutes
- remove dye bath from heating point
- add 50 gram wool
- allow dyeing for 30 minutes under stirring
- take wool out of dye bath and cool down
- heat dye bath to boiling
- remove dye bath from heating point
- add the wool
- allow dyeing for 15 minutes under stirring
- take wool out of dye bath and cool down
- rinsing with streaming water
Silk
37.5 gram weld
4.69 gram potash
25 gram silk
Weld dyeing
Without potash
With potash
Weld dyeing
With potash
Without potash
Samples distributed
- Untreated silk
- Untreated wool
- Washed wool
- Mordanted silk
- Mordanted wool
- Wool dyed with weld
- Wool dyed with weld and potash
- Silk dyed with weld
- Silk dyed with weld and potash
- Plant material from Weld
In addition, samples were taken from the dye bath
during dyeing and analysed at ICN
Samples distributed
Partners
- OADC
- KIK / IRPA
- NGL
- UNI-PG
- ICN
EU-Artech partners
- GCI
- NMS / UoE
External partners
Main issue’s remaining
- How can you sample the plant material in a
homogeneous way prior to dyeing?
- How do we store these reference materials?
- How long are these materials guaranteed?
-?