Until the reign of Henry VIII, Roche or Papal alum had been used as the principle mordant in natural dyeing, due to political turbulence the alum supply through-out Europe was severely disrupted. It was not until the last half of the 17th century that supply once more became dependable due to England's self-sufficiency in alum. Iron sulphate, known at that time as Green Copperas or Green Vitriol was used extensively in the natural dyeing process, not only as a mordant but chiefly to 'sadden' the colours. For example Nutmeg (0909) is 'saddened' Marigold (1365).For the Elizabethan dyer sourcing dye materials was not as easy as we find it today.
Bearing in mind that Elizabeth the First passed a law forbidding all dyers to come within 5 miles of her property whether she was in residence or not, we decided to forgo the use of urine in our woad vat! In producing this new 16th century naturally hand dyed wool range we have used the dyes available to the Elizabethan dyer of some standing. These were predominantly madder, weld, woad, indigo, cochineal, fustic, brazilwood, and cutch. Many of the colours are produced using combination of the dyes, e.g. Zinzolin (1708) is first dyed with cochineal and then over-dyed with woad. Cochineal was a new dye imported by the Spanish from their new territory of Mexico, it was expensive and only for the rich.
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