Natural dyes

Until the advent of the synthetic dyes in the second half of the nineteenth century, all dyes were derived directly from natural sources such as the leaves, flowers, berries, stems or roots of plants, from insects and shellfish, and even a number of minerals. Important centres of dyeing were established around the shores of the Mediterranean five thousand years ago. Dyeing with natural dyes became a skilled craft in ancient Egypt. For yellow they used weld, for blue the woad plant, for red the root of the madder plant. The Phoenicians specialised in using shellfish to produce a dye which ranged from red through to purple to blue. The Greeks and Romans adopted most of these earlier techniques. They also used kermes insect to produce a red dye and archil, a lichen found on seashores, for purple. The colour purple was held in high esteem and was used to indicate rank and status. Until the sixteenth century the range of natural dyes used by European dyers was similar to those used by the Greeks and Romans. Madder, woad and weld were the most important with others such as archil and kemes being used to lesser extent.