So, I know I didn’t stir the pot enough when the weld went in, but wow, such vibrant colour. I can always re-dye for a more even coverage.

This was first mordanted using alum, then dried. A few days later, chopped dried weld and some calcium carbonate, this wool and water were all added to a big pot. I soaked the lot overnight and then heated to just under boiling point for about three quarters of an hour.

Rather stupidly I didn’t put the dried weld in a separate container like a muslin bag, for the boiling process. So of course, I had bits of weld plant all over the wool. You can probably see some bits on the photo. Luckily this all shook off really easily once the wool was dry.

I am interested in history, particularly ancient history, so was curious to know the origins of weld as a dye. Unfortunately, authors disagree, so what follows here is, like my first weld dye attempt, only a first stab. I intend to look a bit deeper.

The first problem is that several plants produce yellow dyes, so identifying which are weld is not so easy. Yellow in dyeing, usually comes from flavonoids (from the Latin, flavus meaning ‘yellow’). Unfortunately for the dyer, several of these are not colourfast (Cardon 2007, 167). This has resulted in many medieval tapestries displaying greenery to turn blue. The green colour was originally made through mixing blue and yellow, but as the yellow degraded only the blue remained. So, in other words, even if fabrics were dyed yellow we may not recognise them. Then there is the whole problem of the correct translation of ancient words.

So, what have I found out so far? Weld was possibly cultivated in Europe from Prehistoric times with seeds having been found in Swiss Neolithic lake villages (Cardon 2007, 175). However, not all authors agree with this (e.g. Barber 1991, 233).

Weld was certainly used in Egypt in Late Antiquity (Cardon 2007, 175–176; Karapanagiotis et al. 2021). It’s unclear if it was used earlier in this region. Some linen mummy wrappings dating to the 11th Dynasty onwards (c. 2100 BC) were a yellowish-brown (Germer 1992). Germer’s (1992) chemical tests suggest that in most cases, before the 21st Dynasty, weld was not used. Yellow dyes were used on linen found in Tutankhamun’s tomb and a yellow thread was found at Amarna (c1300BC) but it is not known what was used to give this colour (Kemp and Vogelsang-Eastwood 2001, 153–155). Iron oxide could give a yellowish-brown colour, and indeed was found on some linen textiles. Safflower and saffron were among the plants available then and there to produce a yellow dye.

Weld seems to have been cultivated in Palestine in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD (Cardon 2007, 176). And, was apparently used to dye the clothes of women in ancient Rome, and particularly those the vestal virgins (Barber 1991, 233 footnote 13). Barber believes the association of yellow clothing with women was related to the Minoan female ritual of the Saffron Gatherers (Barber 1991, 338 footnote 13) at Thera (Santorini). Saffron was also used for menstrual ailments, and as an aphrodisiac. Later Homeric literature limits descriptions of the wearing of yellow cloth to women, and Roman brides wore a yellow veil.

I have never tried dyeing with saffron, partly because it is a very expensive dye which comes from the stamens of a crocus. I have read that it is also quite fugitive, so saffron robes would need to be re-dyed from time to time. Weld is however, more colourfast. Perhaps it replaced saffron because of its relative ease of availability, or perhaps because it was more colourfast. Perhaps it was considered a cheap ‘knock-off’. Again I need to look into this further. Watch this space.

References

Barber, E.J.W. 1991. Prehistoric Textiles. Princeton.

Cardon, D. 2007. Natural Dyes. Sources, Tradition, Technology and Science. London.

Germer, R. 1992. Die Textilefärberei und die Verwendung Gefärbter Textilien im Alten Ägypten. Weisbaden.

Karapanagiotis, I., Abdel-Kareem, O., Kamaterou, P. and Mantzouris, D. 2021. ‘Identification of Dyes in Coptic Textiles from the Museum of Faculty of Archaeology, Cairo University”, Heritage 2021 (4), 3147–3156.

Kemp, B. J., and Vogelsang-Eastwood, G., 2001, The Ancient Textile Industry at Amarna, London.

Wiethold, J. La gaude. 2008. ‘Une plante tinctoriale importante de l’époque médiévale et du début de la période moderne’, Les Nouvelles de l’Archéologie, 52–58.