(original subject line: “Wool types and Colors”)
Q: Would a wedgewood-like blue, royal blue (like on the US flag), a bright medium blue, or a deep olive be period?
A#1: I’ll try and give you a start:
Blues:
The only period bright blue clothing dye* I am
aware of is woad. It can produce a dark violet colour, a dark blue (some
batches described as rather dull, others
as brighter), and some fairly pale blues.
There are some pictures at:
www.bleu-de-lectoure.com
As far as i can figure, you get basically the same shade, just lighter or darker. Some factors in the dying may produce some
difference in the shade. I’m not entirely sure that royal blue lies in the
light-dark spectrum of this shade, but
then I’ve never worked with woad. My impression is that many modern blues are far too greenish (think of
copper-sulfate solution etc), but again,
you need an expert, and I’m decidedly not. So my guess is
for utter authenticity (of the type that will outclass half the room) possibly not the royal blue, and
depends on the mid-blue. I’m thinking
more Australian flag blue than American flag blue 🙂
Apparently Roger II of Sicily’s coronation dalmatic is woad, a lovely dark violety colour – mind you if you look at the
embroidery and tablet weaving he was
getting, you’ll know this was probably the most expensive fabric he could get his hands on :-).
Greens:
I just commented on this earlier in the week:
I’m told woad overdyed with weld (or was it the
opposite overdying?) can make an olive
colour. I don’t know if this exact shade was used in period though. Then again nor does anyone else.
Another thought of mine is that some of the recipes (possibly in the Innsbruck manuscript – 13th C) for blacks and nearly
blacks, could turn out a very dark olive
colour?
* azure=ground lappis lazuli for pigments, but surely not for clothing?
some copper salts are a lovely blue colour, (also fine for pigments) but I’m not sure if this can be used in clothing either (it may not stick, or may change colour)
~ Teffania Tukerton / Tiffany Brown
Message #888, March 9, 2003
A#2: I lurk on this list, as I do mostly Viking
and some 13th century, but enjoy reading and learning from you all, but I know
some things about textiles, so I’ll try
to respond as well.
For colors, you can get a very deep blue with
woad. It depends on a lot of factors in
the dyeing process as Teffania pointed out, but I have woad-dyed wool yarn that is what I would describe as
almost Wedgewood. I have some dye samples
from the Medieval Textiles Study Group that used woad, weld and madder to create an incredible range of colors – I’d scan
them into files, but the shades would probably
not come across correctly.
Hope this helps some.
Yours,
~ Margret / Becky Day
Message #890, March 10, 2003
Q#2: How
about a very, very deep forest or pine
tree green?
A#1: Conceivably a very dark woad overdyed with
weld. Not a poor man’s garment. I can think of
several ways to chase this:
1) Look
for details about dyes used on 12th century garments – except there are many, and they aren’t well published. (woad, probably
madder, weld)
2) Look for dyes used both earlier and
later and extrapolate (woad, madder weld)
3) Ask modern dyers what colours are
possible using dyes that might have been
used in the 12th century (blue, green, red, olive?, teal?…)
4) Textual references to a colour – but
then you need to find out how they defined
such a colour.
5) Look at the colours of fragmentary
textile colours of 12th C textiles (not
just clothing, pouches, hangings, embroidery threads, lining of relic boxes etc. Remember that even the best colour
photograph may be somewhat off in the
colours, and even if you can see the article yourself, it may have faded, chemically changed colour or gotten dirty.
(there seem to be a bit of range of colours of
green visible in the few photos of
textiles I’ve seen)
I doubt we can ever totally know, but we can get closer to the truths. I
just try and justify my choice, and hope that
each time my list of justifications is
longer and more well researched, as I hope my garb to get more authentic with time)
Another interesting question (that I have no
answer to) is not just what colours were available,
but what colours were popular where and when. We probably need to dig up a 12th C city for that, as we don’t seem to have
nearly enough extant garments to study
statistically.
Thanks to everyone who wrote about spinning,
weaving and dying – really interesting.
~ Teffania / Tiffany Brown
Message #894, March 10, 2003