Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/593

DYEING 571 HISTORICAL SKETCH. That dyeing was practised in the most ancient times is abundantly proved by the frequent mention of dyed colours in the oldest extant writings ; that it was not a common art seems apparent from the uses to which coloured garments were devoted, and the distinction which they conferred upon the wearers. It is probable that such definite and bright colours as the " blue, and purple, and scarlet " mentioned several times in the book of Exodus, as well as the Tyrian purple so often referred to by Raman writers of the Augustan age, were so costly as not to be available for general and common use. Pliny is the only one of the older writers from whom we might have expected some account of the processes of dyeing employed at his time ; but, except a reference to two or three tinctorial substances, and a description of a process of obtaining several colours by one dyeing operation, which he saw practised in Egypt (see CALICO-PRINTING, vol. iv. p. 684), there is nothing detailed in his writings; he in fact formally excuses himself from entering upon the subject as one not worthy of his atten tion. The Tyrian purple is the only dye treated of at some length in Pliny and contemporary authors ; its discovery and employment gave wealth and prosperity to Tyre and Sidon more than 1000 years B.C. In the days of the Roman conquests in the East it was reserved under penal statutes for imperial use ; its production then declined, and eventually both the material and the art of using it were lost. From Pliny s description, modern investigators were enabled to rediscover the shell-fish which yielded the dye, but the colours furnished by it were neither so bright nor so permanent as those obtainable from much less costly dyeing materials ; and there is reason to conclude that the most brilliantly tinted garments of an Egyptian priest of Isis or Osiris, or the mantle of a Roman emperor, were poor and dull in hue compared with those within reach of a domestic servant of the present time. From many independent sources Homer, Strabo, Herodotus, &c., it is clearly shown that the manufacture of coloured tissues was carried on by the Oriental nations. A knowledge of the art spread slowly westward, but there are few records of its existence to be found from the time of Pliny to about the 13th century. It would appear that the Jews held the secret or the monopoly of the dyeing art during this long period. According to Mrs Merrifielcl, Benjamin of Tudela relates that when he visited Jerusalem between 11 GO and 1173 he found only 200 Jews resident in that city, and these were all engaged in wool-dyeing, which trade was entirely in their hands. Beckmann shows that at the same epoch the art of dyeing in Italy was principally carried on by Israelites. It is in Sicily that we can first distinctly discern the practice of dyeing in Europe ; afterwards the Italians generally practised it ; and in the 13th century dyers formed important guilds in Florence, Venice, and other cities. It is not to be supposed that the art of dyeing was ever completely lost ; the records of particular seats of the art only indicate that at such places some special excellence had been acquired which gave them a higher reputation than was enjoyed by others. The domestic records of all modern nations speak of dyers and dyed cloths. Among the ancient laws of Ireland are some which lay down the number of colours that may be employed in th& dress of various classes of society, the monarch alone being permitted to wear seven colours ; from which it may be inferred that if the Irish at a very early period were not dyers, they at least had variously dyed garments. Similar facts can be adduced of all countries that possess an early literature. From the perishable nature of textile substances and their comparatively small intrinsic value, very few ancient examples of the dyer s art have been preserved. We have, however, one account of a cloth containing dyed yarn which may have been in the dyer s hands in Egypt 1000 years before the Christian era ; and we have still in good preservation ecclesiastical vestments containing dyed silks which are certainly 600 to 700 years old. The late Mr Thomson of Clitheroe examined numerous mummy cloths, some of which had a border of blue and fawn-colour made by coloured threads introduced into the loom. The blue, upon examination, was proved to have been dyed with indigo ; other specimens of mummy cloth of a reddish colour appeared to have been dyed with safflower, though this colouring matter could not be recognized with the same certainty as indigo. Dr Rock, in his catalogue of the textile fabrics in the South Kensington Museum, attributes many of the church vestments there preserved to the 12th and 13th centuries, and in these can be seen silks of all the colours known to dyers up to the middle of the present century, which, though in most cases changed and faded, still present sufficient evidence that dyeing, upon this material at least, was successfully practised in the Middle Ages. It is interesting further to note that in inventories of vestments of the 13th century the silks in the vestments are often designated by their colours, as in a chasuble at St Paul s, London, 1295, which is set down as "purpureo aliquantulum sanguineo," of a purple inclining to blood red. This, as Dr Rock says, is intelligible ; but other definitions are not, as " pannus Tarsici coloris," a Tarsus- coloured cloth; it can only be conjectured that it was a purple dyed at Tarsus, and something like the Tyrian purple ; sky-blue silk is named " indicus," probably because it was dyed with indigo. The earliest account of the processes and materials used by dyers is to be found in a collection of manuscripts in the French National Library, No 6741, known as the manu scripts of Jehan le Begne. These mostly refer to the art of painting and the making of artists colours and the modes of applying them, but some describe the preparation and use of dyes. The most interesting of these manuscripts is by Jehan Alcherius (Le Begne was only the copier or com piler), which from internal evidence cannot be dated later than the year 1410, and some parts of which refer to a period at least thirty years earlier. Among the colouring matters and mordants there mentioned we find iron (the dust or mud from grindstones on which knives are ground) dissolved in vinegar and mixed with alum, green copperas, and gall nuts prescribed as a black colour ; and methods are given for the use of Brazil wood, litmus, indigo, in con junction with lime and honey, verdigris, alkalies, oxide of tin, kermes, &c., much in the same way as those employed four centuries later by dyers and calico-printers. There are also eleven receipts for preparing colours, for painting on cloth to imitate tapestry, examples of which (toiles peintes) of the 15th century were exhibited in Paris in 1876. Curiously enough, a certain Fleming named Theo dore in 1410 brought these receipts to Alcherius from London, where they were in regular use. They are all chemical dyes, and seem to be the prototypes of the same class of colours employed long subsequently by calico- printers in England and other countries. The first printed account of dyeing processes was an Italian work. It is referred to under the title Mariegola deli arte del Tintori, published at Venice in 1429. The writer has never seen a copy of this work, nor does it appear that any exists in the chief libraries of Europe ; an enlarged edition was published in 1510. In 1548 Rosetti wrote an account of dyeing, which was also published at Venice. Copies of this are not very scarce ; it is the only one of these early books which is actually known.

The so-called Bolognese manuscript translated in Merrifield s