A whole extra pile of mail arrives before Christmas in many British households. This is the seasonal appearance of greetings cards from family, friends, neighbours, and sometimes local businesses. In my case, several cards represent the sole contact I have with ‘old’ friends and I actively anticipate their arrival to hear everyone’s news. News isn’t invariably happy, of course, and the saddest cards are those that don’t arrive at all.
Wax resist and steam-fixed silk dyes on silk pongee, 2020
Almost without exception this year’s cards express the anguish of the past months and the hope that 2021 will be better. Among my extended friends and family there have been job losses, health and financial crises, cancelled celebrations, stranded travellers and separated families. I also learnt of the cards that will not make an appearance.
Wax resist and steam-fixed silk dyes on silk pongee, 2020
It hasn’t all been bad. One of the better outcomes of the year’s crisis has been the communication enabled by such platforms as Zoom. I chat to student friends regularly, and have caught up with people who live abroad or far away, or I haven’t seen for several years. I’ve attended an online conference, several lectures, an AGM, a charity concert, various makers’ fairs, and yoga classes. I’ve ‘met’ longterm online correspondents – and liked them as much as I thought I would.
Wax resist and steam-fixed silk dyes on silk pongee, 2020
The beautiful summer weather assisted a stellar indigo crop to mature and I had enough left over from dyeing to make pigment, and contribute to a research project into Japanese indigo. In the last couple of weeks I delivered a batch of scarves (pictured above) to the Devon Guild of Craftsmen, an organisation that has courageously fought for survival through 2020 and is attracting good sales now that it has been able to reopen. My studio output this year has been meagre because I have been occupied by the complicated business of everyday living, but it felt good to deliver a few new pieces of work at long last. Dr Denim, my contribution to the Guild’s annual Members’ Exhibition, won the People’s Choice Award in November. You can read about much of this work in previous posts.
Thank you for following, reading, contacting me, and commenting. May all your 2021s be an improvement on this stressful year.
Top: blue-purple samples: mauveine-dyed using a shibori technique; lower pair of silks: orchil-dyed in redder shades; threads on orchil-dyed silks: dyed with Tyrian Purple
Here is an image showing an extraordinary trio of historic, and historical, purple dyes. Two are the natural dyes Tyrian Purple and orchil, whose histories are so ancient their origins are unknown. The other dye is a recreated mauveine, the first synthetic dye to be commercially developed, after synthesis in 1856.
All three dyes play a part in an archive I have been researching, which relates to a dye manufacturer based in Leeds. The company began when a young chemist called James Bedford started making orchil and cudbear, later forming a company named Wood & Bedford in around 1850. Through various changes of names and expansions, the company became a major international dye and chemical manufacturer, finally folding in 2004 under the name Yorkshire Chemicals. You can read more about the history by following links below.
Orchil was the natural, lichen sourced dyestuff on which the company’s fortunes were founded by James Bedford. But by the late nineteenth century, William Henry Perkin had discovered and patented his synthetic dye mauveine, signalling the gradual demise of natural dyes in commercial use and the beginning of chemical manufacturing. There was a family connection between the Bedford family and the Perkins’: WH Perkin’s son Arthur G. Perkin married a Bedford daughter. The Leeds company managed to weather the transition from natural to synthetic products and its archives are a fascinating record of how they achieved their success.
As to the Tyrian Purple, perhaps the most unexpected items from the archive are the genuine shellfish-dyed thread samples found in a small envelope. You can see one of the two samples in the image above. Again, please read their story by following links below.
Mauveine dyeings
I was contacted earlier this year by Dr John Plater, a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at the University of Aberdeen. John has made a study of mauveine and has come to several interesting conclusions about Perkin’s dye. It seems that not all mauveines were / are the same. To read about John’s research, please follow the links below. John had read about my studies in orchil and was curious to know something of the versatility of mauveine in working practice. I sent him shibori-tied silks so that he could experiment with dyeing them, suggesting he try an immersion method on one set of samples, and separately apply dyes with an eyedropper. I find the eyedropper method very successful with synthetic dyes as it gives great control of the dye, and is very economical. You can judge which you think most effective from the page below. Immersion dyed are on the left.
The archive’s new home
Later this week I will be presenting a paper at the DHA (Dyes in History and Archaeology) Conference at the Royal School of Needlework, Hampton Court. It will describe the entirety of the Leeds archive, part of which I have been studying. It is now available for public study through the West Yorkshire Joint Services (WYJS) facility at Morley, near Leeds. I will write a separate blog about this after the Conference.
‘The shellfish that was one of the main sources of Tyrian purple – one of the most storied and valuable trading products in the ancient world – has disappeared from the eastern Mediterranean coast, amid warnings of an ongoing multi-species collapse blamed on global rises in sea temperatures.’
Historical cessation of shellfish dyeing The word ‘Tyrian’ derives from the city of Tyre on the north African coast, an area long associated with the Phoenicians and the shellfish dyeing industry. Tyrian Purple has already ‘disappeared’ once. Although an article linked from the Guardian states ‘snail-fueled purple persisted until chemists learned to make synthetic dyes,’ this is quite untrue.
It’s well known (in the dye world, at least) that shellfish dyeing largely ceased around the time of the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, after which the last dyers seemed to have disappeared. And in the eastern Mediterranean, purple dyeing ceased almost a millennium earlier as a result of the Arab conquest at the beginning of the 7th century. Analysis of historic textiles continues to confirm this. The biochemical method of shellfish dyeing was complex, relying on processes which were not understood chemically, and were probably only passed down within families. Basically, when the dyers ‘disappeared’ they took the method with them. Any contemporaneous written records of the dye process are incomplete or ambiguous, and cannot be used to make a vat.
Recovery of the dyeing method Shellfish pigment must first be made soluble, (as with any dye), and this only occurs in alkaline conditions of around pH 8 and higher. An additional requirement for dissolution of the pigment is that it must undergo ‘reduction’. In reduction the pigment’s molecules are converted to a slightly altered, but more soluble, molecular structure. This reduction process is achieved by removing oxygen from the pigment molecules, or by adding hydrogen to them. The vat turns a yellowy colour and fibre, threads or fabric are introduced. Colour will return to dyed items as they re-oxygenate on removal into the air. Readers who are indigo dyers will be familiar with this process.
The lost dyeing method Until the painstaking work in the 1990s of a retired engineer, the late John Edmonds, the exact method for creating a true shellfish purple reduction vat was lost. (Note that a reduction vat is entirely different from a direct application process performed by smearing the pre-pigment secretions). Edmonds used his knowledge of woad fermentation to recreate the ancient shellfish dye method. He knew, from the early 20th century work of Paul Friedländer, that shellfish dye was an indigoid and would need a reduction process to work. Edmonds used shellfish pigment extract for colour, and the rotting flesh of tinned cockles to start the required fermentation. In subsequent years, chemist Zvi Koren (more about Zvi later) and artist Inge Boesken-Kanold separately explored and perfected more authentic historical procedures for dyeing and painting using shellfish purple.
The purple threads The earliest known historically accurate shellfish dyeings since the 15th century were, until recently, the initial samples produced by Edmonds. But in 2008 I discovered a small envelope containing purple cotton threads in a nineteenth / early twentieth century archive. They were labelled in as having been dyed with ‘the bodies of shellfish’. Could they be genuine?
Zvi Koren In 2011 I wandered around an exhibition in the company of Zvi Koren. Zvi is an internationally known and respected authority on shellfish purple and his lively presentations on the subject make him a unique and entertaining conference speaker. He showed interest in my presentations on orchil research, and we discovered a mutual obsession for appallingly groanworthy puns.
I tentatively mentioned the envelope of shellfish dyed threads I had found. Zvi was clearly sceptical, as rightly befitted an analytical chemist, and was fairly certain the threads would be fake. He told me that only a scientific analysis, rather than visual inspection, would prove or disprove the claim. In his work, Zvi has analysed archaeological dyeings previously claimed by analysts to be shellfish dyed. Zvi’s precise analyses on these same artefacts showed that the ‘real purple’ was in fact an overdye produced from madder and indigo. He reminded me that prior to the work of Edmonds and others I’d have to go back nearly 600 years to find a true dyeing supported by chemical analysis. Paul Friedländer, who first identified the chemistry of shellfish purple in 1909, left no known samples. But Zvi’s a good sport and was clearly intrigued. He suggested I send a small sample of the threads to him for analysis at the Edelstein Center for the Analysis of Ancient Artifacts, in Israel. So I did.
The research Zvi has described his astonishment when his analysis found the dyeing to be genuine shellfish purple, and he suggested we write a paper together. The work we undertook mapped a possible scenario for how the dyeing came about, why, and at what date. It involved parallel investigations based on Zvi’s scientific analysis of the threads through photomicrographic images and instrumental chromatography. We also studied classical and biblical texts; 19th century literature; the history of science and scientific connections; and the remarkable Bedford family of Leeds. Zvi was extremely patient with my lack of chemical knowledge and I continue to be grateful for his clear explanations, and the general good humour which illuminated the science I frequently failed to grasp.
Significance of our research So is this a big deal? We definitely think so. It’s huge! Firstly, before the Tyrian Purple dyed threads I found, no other dyeings have been confirmed since around the 15th century. That’s of considerable interest to researchers. Additionally, their very existence superbly illustrates the activities, interests and connections of an industrious Leeds family in the late 19th and early 20th century. More of that in Part Two – which will follow in the next fortnight.
If you are interested in knowing more about any aspect of this research please contact me through the blog.
Thanks Many thanks to colleague and friend Zvi Koren for his knowledge, diligence and support, and for his comments and additions to this and the following blog. And not forgetting the puns.
Links and bibliography
Whitworth and Koren paper published in Ambix. Available from Taylor & Francis Online here.
Ancient shellfish used for purple dye vanishes from eastern MedGuardian article , December 5th 2016
John Edmonds’ book: Tyrian or Imperial Purple Dye: The Mystery of Imperial Purple Dye, Historic Dye series no. 7, Little Chalfont, 2000. Published by the author.
There is a lot to say about Summer School and I’m short of time, so pictures will have to do their ‘thousand words’ thing. But here’s a quick summary. The Summer School of the Association of Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers (AGWSD) takes place every two years, in a different location. (If you want to know about the AGWSD, follow the link at the bottom of the post).
This year we convened at Moreton Morrell, at an agricultural college in Warwickshire not far from Stratford-upon-Avon. The arrangements for the 17 courses were immaculately prepared by the organisers, although some tutors and students faced various challenges in their allotted teaching spaces. In mine, for instance, wooden wall panels had been fitted to cover walls, and the holes in them had been cut too small to allow a plug into the sockets behind. As we were working in the joinery department, this caused considerable merriment, and resulted in creative arrangements of extension leads – the admiration of all knitters at Summer School. I should add that the department staff came to cut the panel holes larger and were more than helpful.
The intensely blue floor was an unexpectedly complicated colour distraction when working on sheer scarves stretched flat. It was hard to see the true colours of the dyes. Needing somewhere to hang drying work, I searched in vain in the workroom for suitable points to fix a line. Eventually a group of rebels set up a washing line, trespassing into the stables (no, no horses, just heaps of old chairs).
Our workroom at Moreton Morrell
Show-and-tell after opening the steamer
Equine livery
Mission Impossible
The course
I taught two identical courses on wax resist which ran back-to-back, and lasted two-and-a-half days each. These short courses, taught by several of the tutors, were designed so that students could follow two sets of studies in the week, and allow the possibility of a shorter stay. I have to admit that as an ageing tutor I found the two-course arrangement tiring. It demanded two inputs of ‘startup’ energy in an already exhausting week: on the plus side it meant that I could teach 20 students, not just 10.
Students used a range of traditional tools such as Indonesian tjantings, Ukrainian kystkas, Japanese ro-fude brushes and a Gambian tool made of a handle wound with copper wire. I also brought a motley crew of household brushes, kitchen forks, tractor washers, odd bits of wire and wood which were used to dip into the wax to make marks on the fabric. Students then dyed the fabric surface and built up the work up layer by layer.
The students rose to all manner of challenges, whether creative, personal, age, or health-related, as I realised from the ‘thank you’ card given to me at the end. Their work was inspired and inspiring, many tackling creative dyeing for the first time and declaring themselves somewhat anxious at the beginning. Teaching a few students who already had some experience was good for the group, allowing beginners to see more developed work and to talk through techniques and ideas. I was delighted to re-meet one student I first taught 17 years ago, and see how her work has developed.
Making a wax sampler. This student is using a wooden block set with nails to make dots
Student sampler with dye layers
Drying work in the stable yards
Finishing touches on a crêpe de Chine scarf
Sampler complete
Inspired by her sampler, this student made four related panels built in several layers
Related panels after several layers
A figurative piece
Great use of free painted dots and wax resisted circles
The Summer School organisers faced considerable challenges with the demands made on them by the premises and some of the students, dealing with them with patience and grace. They had set up a full après-teach programme to keep us all out of trouble when darkness fell. Our Monday evening talk was given by Association President Jenny Balfour Paul with characteristic enthusiasm and energy. She outlined her travels with indigo, and how it led to writing her recently-published book Deeper than Indigo. Jenny gave a further day of her time to visit all studios and courses the next day, engaging with students and their work.
Jenny Balfour Paul addresses students at the Summer School
There were tours (I went to RSC Stratford); a Silent Auction; barbecues; a hog roast; a fashion show, a Trade Fair; and a Fifties party to celebrate the Association’s 60th year. Students stayed up into the wee hours to make Fifties outfits and fascinators. I’m afraid I was too tired to join in the fun and went to bed unfascinatored.
My thanks to all hard-working Summer School organisers, particularly Chris, plus the support team whose names I do not necessarily know. And thanks to my students, for their trust, good humour, co-operation and enthusiasm. Please look at Katie’s blog, linked below, for a student’s view of my course (and the Rigid Heddle course taught by Dawn Willey) at this year’s Summer School. You can see Katie in the images above, painting the four panels. She based them on the Four Seasons.
Links
Hilltop Katie’s blog about her experience of Summer School here
For an overview of Summer School plus a Storify read her account here
Association of Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers website here
The Journal of the Association of Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers here
If you signed up to my blog solely on the basis of posts on natural dyes and history, I offer apologies. This is about neither. As well as researching the history of natural dyes (in particular, orchil), I still produce work as a textile artist. Some of this uses natural dyes, but I also work with synthetic dyes on silk for resist techniques such as wax and shibori.
The Devon Guild of Craftsmen is holding an exhibition called Life Illustrated from 2nd October – 15th November 2015. Sketchbooks are the theme of Life Illustrated, showing them both as source material and as part of the creative process. A number of Devon Guild members are contributing new work, plus their precious books.
My training as an illustrator in the late 1960s was drawing-based, and I have used sketchbooks as source material for over 50 years. For Life Illustrated I decided to revisit an ‘old’ design and see how it adapted to current techniques and materials. Back then I was using a simple gutta outliner to draw the design and control the dye. Now I prefer to use wax. The design was based on drawings I made of fritillary butterfly wings. Here are sketchbook studies from 17 years ago:
Drawing from image of butterfly: pencil and watercolour
Starting to work out a design in my sketchook. Second from top shows sections cut by a sinuous line. Shapes are either positive or negative either side
The design formula divided the scarf into about nine sections. A sinuous line bisected all sections, running down on the scarf’s vertical. You can see this drawn out in the sketchbook images above although the scarf is imagined from the side. Shapes either side of the sinuous line are either ‘positive’ (dark on a light ground) or ‘negative’ (light out of a dark ground). This polarity swapped from side to side and line to line. It was logical to look at, but entirely silly to explain. Below, you’ll find a sketch showing the basic structure.
Although I sometimes archive samples, I don’t have any of Fritillary. They were large, on very good quality silk and they sold well. So I was probably too money-grabbing to keep one, which I now regret. All I have left are sketches and a rather poor image rescued from my old website.
The only image I can find of the ‘Fritillary’ design. From 1997
The top pencil scribble shows the skeleton of the design
For the exhibition Life Illustrated I made new sketches to remind myself of what had inspired me. Then I stretched a scarf, dyed the background and outlined the design with wax – in much the same way as I remembered doing with gutta. I found I was able to reproduce the old design pretty well, although the quality of the outlining wax marks is looser than with gutta. That’s not a problem with this design. So I went ahead and made two or three scarves.
One of the reasons I became tired of gutta is that it is an outlining process. All design elements are drawn carefully with the gutta pen, and dye is filled in up to the gutta line. It’s a tight technique – even a bit tedious at times because one is often reproducing a pre-planned scheme. The reason I love wax is that spontaneous brush marks can create the shapes in a design (by instantly blocking out further application of dye). Of course, one can use wax tools such as tjantings or kystkas to draw outlines, just like gutta. But I find larger waxed marks more expressive and the design evolves in a more fluid way. So my next step was to try to adapt the old design to this preferred use of waxed marks instead of outlines.
I soon realised that ‘block-out’ marks needed more space around them than the simpler outlined shapes I used years ago. Large brush marks are often textured, oddly shaped and ‘whiskery’ at the edges. In the same nine-section format, my next waxed scarf looked crammed and overcrowded. I reduced the number of horizontal divisions to five and it works better, but that’s as far as I’ve got. I’m not done with it yet.
Large waxed marks create shapes by blocking further applications of dye
The dark purple and crimson shapes are created by surrounding wax marks holding in the dye
Positive and negative: To make the ‘negative’ marks (lighter on a dark ground) I make a large waxed shape with a brush that blocks out the background. Then the background is dyed around that mark. To make ‘positive’ marks (darker on a light ground) I create an island of unwaxed silk surrounded by a sea of freely waxed marks.
Teaching: On Sunday I’m off to Warwickshire to teach at the Summer School of the Association of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. I’ll be running two courses back-to-back introducing wax resist on silk.
I will be teaching three times at West Dean next year (March, May and July) but if you want a place, please book early. The March course already has a waiting list.
I’m also running a one-day introduction to wax resist on silk at Ardington School of Crafts next month (September). Please contact these venues for information (links below) and see my courses page.
There can’t be many households in agricultural areas which don’t have some baler twine in their house. It’s used by farmers principally for the binding of hay or straw bales. Wikipedia states: Baling twine or baler twine is a small diameter sisal or synthetic twine used to bind a quantity of fibrous material (notably hay or straw) into a more compact and easily stacked form. Tensile strengths of single-ply baling twine range from 95 psi (0.66 MPa) to 325 psi (2.24 MPa).
Synthetic baler twine: dropped by roadside ready-wound into a length to be used for an as yet unknown task
Down here you can find useful discarded lengths of it in the hedgerows, on the moors and in the fields. I’ve seen the multitude of uses to which it is put: holding a fence together; as a temporary gate-hinge; keeping a car-boot lid closed; as an improvised dog-lead; in birds’ nests and more crucially, holding up a farmer’s trousers. People collect it where it drops, saving it for a multitude of future unknown tasks. There is a kind of simple human optimism in this.
Here in Devon, local farmers have been completing the harvest, which includes baling and the generous distribution of baler twine to keep errant boot-lids down and trousers up. Recently they have been cutting moor grassland to use for animal bedding. The grass is cut and allowed to dry before being baled into cylinders for storage and I recently noticed a group of these, bound up in what looked like black and white stripes of baler twine. Only they weren’t, and it wasn’t.
I had a look up close to discover the ‘twine’ was actually a wide plastic mesh. It contracts widthwise when wound onto the bales under tension. I was intrigued by its structure and complexity, wondered who sat and designed it, where it is made, and whether its structure was solely suited to this one baling process. I started to research it online – and found it’s called bale netwrap and is sold by suppliers of agricultural bindings, such as good old baler twine. Not so useful in the trouser department, I suspect, and might be hazardous for birds that become caught up in it.
Close-up of binding
The cylindrical bale
Bales on the moor
The mesh itself
I have been moderately unfit for purpose myself recently, hence my lack of posts. Now I’m better and I have just completed teaching my final course of the year at West Dean, only to return with a heavy cold. Unfortunately I can think of no way in which baler twine will alleviate the symptoms.
My March 27th – 30th 2015 course Rhythm and Pattern is nearly full so if you want a place, contact West Dean as soon as possible. I will be teaching a further course from 17th – 19th July 2015.
No posting recently because I’ve had a month of intensive teaching followed by intensive feet-putting-up. I ran three courses at Ardington in Oxfordshire and then four days in Nether Stowey at the studio of Janet Phillips.
Several vats on the go
Cochineal and indigo
Cochineal and indigo
At Ardington School of Crafts I taught my synthetic dyes shibori day, plus two one-day (repeated) courses on natural dyes. The natural dye course is a taster to a fascinating subject with some practical work at the dyepots, but also intended as an eye-opener to textiles seen at a stately home, museum etc. It’s even relevant to looking at paintings: I often wonder what dyestuffs were used on garments represented (with pigments) in a historic portrait. We had to move fast, with all fibre and fabric pre-mordanted, and an indigo vat ready to go. Most students dyed a scarf using simple immersion methods. We used madder, weld, cochineal and two indigo vats (one weak, one strong).
At Nether Stowey, I taught a three-day-dye course to several of Janet’s graduates from her Masterclass. On day one they learned some shibori folds using steam-fixed dyes; day two gave them a taster of wax resist, and day three was a full day with indigo. At the same time as I taught dyes, Janet was teaching ‘shibori on the loom’ to students from the London Guild. In this technique, removable weft threads are incorporated into the weaving. They are later used to draw up the cloth tight. According to how the shibori threads are woven, patterns emerge after the piece is dyed, then opened up.
Students used coloured and plain warps, on different pieces. Some of this shibori work was put into my indigo vat on day four; others used Janet’s fibre-reactive dyes which were applied by placing woven pieces into a short length of gutter (brilliant idea) and painting by hand. I am used to folding, tying and clamping for indigo work and although I have seen loom shibori before, I haven’t watched the whole process from start to finish. A combination of enthusiastic and knowledgeable students, Janet’s teaching and the imaginative arrangements made by Janet and Nigel made for a very enjoyable week. Did I mention glorious weather?
Loom shibori gathered up for dyeing
Undyed loom shibori being opened
Indigo-dyed loom shibori
Fibre-reactive dyes applied to loom shibori
Indigo-dyed loom shibori
Many thanks to students at Ardington and Nether Stowey for permission to use images of their work.
Teaching in 2015
Dates of next years’ courses are accumulating. I will be tutoring two courses at the Association of Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers Summer School in August 2015 at Moreton Morrell. Details of the entire event can be seen here and there are details on this page.
I am teaching a new one-day introductory course in wax-resist at Ardington School of Crafts in 2015 as well as days on shibori scarves, indigo dyeing. The Vibrant World of Natural Dyes proved very popular this year and I will be teaching it again in 2015: I have one course at West Dean scheduled for March. If you want to sign in, do so soon because my October course has been full since April.
Work laid out during dyeing with individual twists held in position
A recent picture posted on Twitter gained me more re-tweets, follows and favourites than I’ve ever had. I’d been excited to share a caterpillar-shaped tying-and-dyeing which emerged like a butterfly into unpicked daylight. I was using a new set of folds, twists and ties and had a feeling it was going to be successful. While working the piece (and others like it, as left) my studio dyeing area looked like an operating theatre, with clips and ties keeping twists weighted down, or held out of the way so that nothing bled together. Dyeing took me a long time, adding colours one-by-one with an eye-dropper. I then had to wait until it was completely dry before unpicking, which was like eyeing up an interesting-looking present under the Christmas Tree.
Unpicking was a forensic job where a seam-picker and total concentration was essential so I didn’t make an accidental hole in the fabric. I unpicked before steam-fixing, so I also had to keep the work bone dry.
Tied and dyed
Detail of ties
Forensic surgery
Caterpillar to Butterfly
After the work was unpicked, I had, with regret, to iron out the beautiful bumps and wrinkles. Work must go into the steamer rolled flat. Although steaming will help set wrinkles, it isn’t really an option for me. Strong wrinkles last only as long as the work remains dry and I plan to sell these pieces as wearable and washable scarves.
The silk was a georgette 8 (I tried using a 10, but the increased density left me with less interesting dye ‘migrations’). I use dental floss or tape for tying and the metal clips were from shopfitting suppliers Morplan. I think they are used for displaying pairs of socks…. but I use them for endless studio jobs. Morplan don’t still stock the ones I show at the top, above, but there is s similar design online. They are especially suited to work with dyes as the grips can be wiped clean.
The Guardian: Monday 5th December 2016.
Isabella Whitworth 