COLOUR.
"My soul, what gracious glorious powers
To hue and radiance God has given!"
Cautley, "Emblems," p. 21.
It is my intention to confine myself to the discussion of colour, in
as far as it belongs to the dyes of textiles and the materials for
embroidery. I will adhere as closely as I can to this part of what is
a great and most interesting subject--one which the science of to-day
has opened out, and by the test of experiment, cleared of erroneous
theories; revealing to us all its beauty and fitness for the use and
delight of man.
As through all ages the eye has been gradually educated to appreciate
_harmony_ in colour, so _dissonance_--that is, what errs against
harmony--hurts us, without apparently a sufficient reason; and we have
to seek the causes of our sensations in the scientific works and
lectures of Professor Tyndall and others.
There is no doubt that the appreciation of colour has belonged in
different degrees to the eye of every animal, but especially to that
of man, ever since light first painted the flowers of the field. The
eye is created to see colour, as well as form. But we know that men,
being accustomed to acquiesce in the powers with which they find
themselves gifted by nature, enjoy and use them, long before they
begin to study, classify, and name them.
When we recollect that the circulation of the blood was not known
within the last three hundred years, and that Albert Dürer painted
the skeleton Death on the bridge of Lucerne, with one bone in the
upper and one in the lower arm, we shall be surprised to find that the
ancients had named the colours they saw, with some degree of
descriptive and scientific precision. The word "purple," for instance,
covered a multitude of tints, which had not as yet been
differentiated, either in common parlance or in poetry,[283] though as
articles of commerce the purple tints had been early distinguished.
What names have we now, in this present advanced day, for defining
tastes or smells? We say that something smells like a violet, or a
rose, or a sea breeze, or a frosted cabbage. We say a smell is nice or
nasty, that a taste is delicious or nauseous; but beyond calling it
sweet or sour, we have no descriptive words for either smells or
tastes, whereas the nations who traded in the materials for dyes
exchanged their nomenclatures, which we can recognize from the
descriptive remarks of different authors.
Colour, as an art, was born in those lands which cluster round the
eastern shores of the Mediterranean--the northern coasts of Syria and
Arabia, and the isles of Greece. All art grew in that area, and all
its adjuncts and materials there came to perfection, though often
imported from more southern and eastern sources.[284]
E. Curtius says that the science of colour came into Europe with the
Phœnicians and accompanied the worship of Astarte. This, of course,
applies to artistic textiles, as the Greeks had already acquired the
art of dyeing for plain weaving. Numa, in his regulations for
necessary weaving, refers also to colour. The Italians therefore
must at that time have made some advance in the art, especially the
Etruscans.[285]
The infinity of variation in colour is difficult to imagine. The
chemists of the Gobelins have fixed and catalogued 4480 tones.
Besides, we must not forget that it is now all but ascertained that
the same colour is probably appreciated differently by nearly every
eye.[286]
How the eye accepts colours and conveys them to the mind is still a
question in dispute, though the theories of Tyndall, Helmholz, Hering,
Charpentier, and others, aided by experiments, are drawing ascertained
facts into a circle, which will ere long be complete, and the
mysteries of colour may be ascertained.
Probably the effects of colour on educated minds are as various as the
tints and shades of tones of the many substances which receive
them,--reflected from all surrounding objects, blazing in light, or
softened by shadow,--fresh and glowing, or permanently faded--shining
with modern varnish, or sobered by the dust of ages.
It is the art of the colourist, whether he paints pictures, or dyes
textiles, or embroiders them, to reduce the tints of the prism to an
endurable and delightful lowness of tone, while preserving as far as
possible all their light and purity.
Prismatic colours are so radiantly glorious, that when we see the
rainbow in the sky it is each time a joyful surprise. The most stolid
natures are moved by it; we have even seen our dog staring at it.
When, in experiments on light, the shafts of colour are thrown on the
wall, they are greeted with shouts of admiration; but these glories
are veiled to us by the fact that the eye cannot dissect the prismatic
ray without the assistance of the instrument that has revealed it.
This is a merciful arrangement; for we are not fitted to live in a
prismatic display, any more than in a continuity of lightning flashes.
We should go mad or blind if exposed to either.
Science has shown us the perfect beauty of colour without form, the
soothing pleasures of its harmonies, and the delightful surprises of
its contrasts. From the glimpses we have of its nature and laws, we
may hope for fresh inspiration for the art of the colourist.
Though it is true that each eye, even when educated, retains its own
special appreciation of the colours that gratify its seeing nerve, yet
there are certain standards which give almost universal pleasure.[287]
The blind and the colour-blind must remain exceptions for all time;
and there are many gradations in colour-blindness, till we come to the
normal class of seeing eyes; and passing them by, reach to those few
men, gifted beyond all others with that fund of sensitive eye-nerve
and mental power, which enables them to create new thoughts in
colour.[288] Titian and his school arose from the inherited science
and tradition, and carefully prepared pigments of his immediate
predecessors, acting on an exceptional eye and mind, imbued with the
splendours of the early mornings and the sunsets in the glowing
atmosphere of Venice.
Colour has long been supposed to convey certain impressions to the
mind. The absence of all colour, which we call "black," symbolizes in
dress, grief, pride, or dignity; according as it drapes the mourner,
the Spanish grandee, or the priest.[289] Yellow being the colour of
the sun and of corn and gold, represents riches, generosity, and
light. Red stands between the dark and the lively colours, and
represents warmth and animation, dignity, splendour, life, love, and
joy.
The expression of blue is that of purity. It recalls the distant sky,
the calm ocean, and has an immortal and celestial character. It
ascends to the highest and descends to the lowest tones of
_chiaro-oscuro_. Nothing so nearly approaches pure white as the palest
blue; nothing is so nearly black as the darkest.
Green has been assigned by nature the place of the universal
background. It is the complementary colour of red, softening and
assimilating it by reflected shadows, and setting off the glory of
every flower and fruit. The expression of green is gaiety and modesty,
light and tenderness, shadow and repose, to both the eye and the
mind.[290]
It must be allowed that it is by the earliest associations of the
individual, or by those derived from the family, the tribe or the
nation, that colours are connected with such attributes welded by art
and time into traditional meanings, which they absolutely
possess,[291] and from which fashion cannot disconnect them; such,
for instance, is the royalty of purple.
The word purple is so indiscriminately used as a poetic epithet,
rather than as a distinctive appellation, that much confusion has been
caused by it. Historically, among the Persians, Greeks, and Romans it
appears to have been simply the royal colour, varying from the purest
blue, through every shade of violet, down to the deepest crimson.
Sometimes, poetically, "purple" seems to have described only a
surface. The breezy or stormy sea was purple; the sky was purple; the
hyacinthine locks of Narcissus, the rosy lips of Venus were purple. As
a textile, velvet was purple, even when it was white.[292]
The epithets "purple" and "wine-coloured" are often bestowed on the
Mediterranean Sea, and are justified by its occasional hue:--
"As from the clouds, deep-bosom'd, swell'd with showers,
A sudden storm the purple ocean sweeps,
Drives the wild waves, and tosses all the deeps."
Pope's Homer, "Iliad," b. xi. v. 383.
Professor Tyndall suggests that the soft green of the sea, shadowed by
clouds, assumes a subjective purple hue. Homer must have observed this
before he became blind.
Pliny gives us much information about this colour; he enumerates the
different sea-shores and coasts, Egyptian, Asiatic, and European,
whence came the shell-fish (the murex and pelagia) that produced the
so-called Tyrian purple dyes.[293]
He says that Romulus wore the purple, and that the dyed garments, all
purple, were sacred to the gods in those days. After saying that it
was still a colour of distinction, he continues: "Let us be prepared
to excuse the frantic passion for purple, though we are impelled to
inquire why such a high value is placed on the produce of this fish,
seeing that in the dye the smell of it is offensive, and the colour,
of a greenish hue, resembles the sea when tempestuous." He describes
purples[294] as being differently coloured according as to whether
these "conchylia" inhabited the sea mud, the reefs, or the pebbly
shores, the last being the most valuable.[295] This purple, said to
have been imported from the coasts of Tyre, was till lately sold in
Rome for its weight in gold; it gave the burning rosy red dye of the
Cardinal's robes, and was called "Porpora encarnadina," purple
incarnadine. It is full of light and freshness, and never fades; in
fact, it has all the qualities ascribed to it by Pliny. It intensifies
in the light.[296]
After purple, scarlet was the colour most esteemed by the ancients.
The Israelites must have carried with them the dyes which coloured the
hangings, woven or embroidered, belonging to the sanctuary in the
wilderness, of which the outer covering of rams' skins was dyed
scarlet, and was probably of the nature of red morocco.[297]
There was the mineral dye, (cinnabar or red sulphate of mercury), and
the insect dye; the first was probably used in mural painting. It is
translated in our Bible as vermilion, in the account given by Jeremiah
of a "house, ceiled with cedar, and painted with vermilion."[298] Also
Ezekiel gives us another instance of house-painting in vermilion.[299]
Homer, who as a rule does not describe colouring, says the Greek ships
were painted red.
It is probable that cinnabar was tempered, by admixture of white or
other colours, for the monochrome painting of the Egyptians and
Greeks. It was called by the Greeks miltos, by the Romans minium.
The dye of the red portions of the funeral tent of Queen Isi-em-Kheb,
Shishak's mother-in-law, is found by analysis to be composed of
hematite (peroxyde of iron) tempered with lime. This is a beautiful
pink red.[300]
The mineral red now called vermilion must have borrowed its name from
the insect dye which the Greeks and Romans called "kermes." In the
Middle Ages the dye from the kermes was still called "vermiculata," of
which the word vermilion is a literal translation.
We should be fortunate if we could find how the Greeks and Romans
prepared the cinnabar for mural painting, of which we find remnants in
ruins and tombs--a lovely and pure red, with a tender bloom on it like
a fragment of the rainbow, and not the slightest shade of yellow.
One of the most beautiful specimens of this scarlet that I am
acquainted with, is a small drinking-cup (a "rhyton") at the British
Museum, in the form of a sphinx, with a white face, gilded hair, and a
little cap of pure cinnabar, which is so soft in tone that it suggests
the texture of scarlet velvet.
Cochineal, which was first brought from America in the sixteenth
century, has now replaced almost every other scarlet dye for textiles.
Crimson is once mentioned in Chronicles as karmel,[301] which may mean
the dye of the kermes insect;[302] and from this the word crimson is
legitimately derived. Whether the scarlet coupled with it is a
vegetable, mineral, or insect colour, we have no means of
ascertaining. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white
as snow; though they be red as crimson, they shall be as wool."[303]
From what Pliny says, it appears that some green dyes were produced
from a green clay; others from metals. Copper furnished the most
beautiful shades.
Blue has always been extracted from indigo. Pliny tells us that the
Phœnicians brought it from Barbarike, in the Indies, to Egypt; and
he quotes the "Periplus" on this subject. He gives an amusing report
that indigo is a froth collected round the stems of certain reeds; but
he was aware of its characteristic property, that of emitting a
beautiful purple vapour when submitted to great heat; and he says it
smells like the sea. The Egyptians likewise extracted blues from
copper.
Yellow was anciently, in Egypt, sometimes a vegetable and sometimes a
mineral dye. Browns and blacks were prepared from several substances,
especially pine wood and the contents of tombs burned into a kind of
charcoal.
We find that lime, chalk, white lead, and other mineral substances
were employed by the ancients for the different approaches to dazzling
whiteness. That of the lily, the emblem of purity, can only be
emulated in textile or pictorial art by opaque substances reduced as
much as possible by bleaching to the last expression of the colour of
the raw material. Nothing that is transparent can be really white, as
colours are seen through it, as well as the reflected lights on the
two surfaces.
In painting, we can produce the effect of whiteness in different ways,
leading by the gradation of tender colours and shadows up to a high
light. But in textile art, which is essentially flat, it is necessary
to pursue a different method, and that of isolation is the most simple
and effective, and was well understood in Egypt, Greece, and India.
The white pattern, or flower, is surrounded with a fine dark line
(black is the best), which effectually separates it from all the
surrounding colours, and gives it the effect of light, even when the
whiteness retains enough of the natural colour of the raw material to
tone it down very perceptibly. The eye accepts it as white, and
ignores the tint that pervades it, and is hardly to be expelled from
silk or wool. Linen and cotton are the whitest of materials, after
passing through the hands of the chemist or the bleacher.
It is amusing to observe that Pliny regarded colours, whether
vegetable or mineral, rather as useful for the pharmacopeia of his
day, than as dyes or artistic pigments. He speaks contemptuously of
the art of his time, and yet he gives some curious hints that are well
worth collecting for experiment. His fragmentary information, though
often inaccurate, is most valuable to those who are seeking once more
to find lasting colours, and despair of discovering mordants that will
fix the aniline tints. From him we learn more of the Egyptian
colouring materials than of any others, as he named their sources,
European, Asiatic, or African; and there is no doubt of the perfection
of their mural pigments and textile dyes, which have remained
unimpaired to the present time.
Renouf says that "painting, as it is now understood, was totally
unknown to the Egyptians; but they understood harmony of colour,[304]
and formulated in it certain principles for decorative uses. They made
the primary colours predominate over the secondary by quantity and
position. They introduced fillets of white or yellow in their
embroideries, as well as in their paintings, between reds and greens,
to isolate them; and they balanced masses of yellow with a due
proportion of black." They never blended their colours, and had no
sense of the harmony of prismatic gradations, or the melting of one
tint into another; each was worked up to a hard and fast edge line. If
in one part of a building, one set of colours predominated, they
placed a greater proportion of other colours elsewhere, within the
range of sight, so as to readjust the balance. Those they employed
were mostly earthy mineral colours (used alike for frescoes and for
painting cotton cloths, though vegetable dyes were needed for woollens
and linens). These were: for _white_, pure chalk; for _black_,
bone-black mixed with gum; for _yellow_, yellow ochre; for _green_, a
mixture of yellow ochre and powdered blue glass; for _blue_, this same
blue glass mixed with white chalk; for _red_, an earthy pigment
containing iron and aluminium.[305] They understood the chemistry of
bleaching, and the use of mordants in dyeing.[306]
The statistical records of China of the time of Hias (2205 B.C.),
according to Semper, mention colours as being of five tints, and all
the produce of the Chinese Empire.[307]
In the unchanging art of India, the ancient colours are used now.
Therefore, when we give the following list, we must suppose that it
embraces all that have been known from the beginning.
Indian dyes are mostly vegetable. For _yellow_, akalbir, the root of
the Datiscus Canabinus; also yellow is dyed with asbarg, the flower of
the Cabul larkspur (_Delphinium sp._).
_Orange._ Soneri dyed with narsingar, the honey-scented flower of
nyclanthes (_Arbor Tristis_).
_Scarlet_ is first dyed with cochineal (formerly with kermes), which
gives a crimson colour; next with narsingar, which turns it vermilion.
_Purple_ is dyed first with cochineal (formerly kermes), afterwards
with indigo.
_Lilac._ Ditto, only paler.
_Blue._ All shades of indigo.
_Green._ With indigo first, and next the various yellow dyes.
_Brown._ Sandal-wood, called "sandali;" almond colour (Badami).
_Grey._ Sulphate of iron and gold.
_Black._ Deepest shade of indigo.[308]
Speaking of Indian coloured textiles, Sir G. Birdwood says: "All
violent contrasts are avoided. The richest colours are used, but are
so arranged as to produce the effect of a neutral bloom, which tones
down every detail almost to the softness and transparency of the
atmosphere." He says that in their apparel both the colouring and the
ornaments are adapted to the effect which the fabrics will produce
when worn and in motion. "It is only through generations of patient
practice that men attain to the mystery of such subtleties."
An outline, in black or some dark colour that harmonizes with the
ground, or else worked in gold, is common in Indian work, not only for
the purpose of isolating the colours of the design, but also to give a
uniform tone to the whole surface of the texture. Their traditional
arrangements of tints were thoroughly satisfying to the eye. But
degenerated by European commerce, the artistic sense of beauty itself
is disappearing throughout our Indian Empire.
Persian carpets (the fine old ones of the fourteenth to the
seventeenth centuries) give us lessons in the art of isolating
colours. In these, a flower will lie upon a surface which contains two
or more other tints, and as the design passes over them, the outline
colour is changed, so as to isolate the flower equally on the
different grounds. This is done with such art that the eye ignores the
transition till it is called to remark it. For instance, as a white,
or no-coloured pattern, wanders over a green and red ground, the
outline changes suddenly from green to red, and again to green as it
leaves the opposite colour on the ground pattern.
Mr. Floyer speaks of the brilliancy and lasting qualities of the dyes
which the Persians, by slow and tedious processes, extract from
plants; from the "runaschk" (madder), a fine red; from the "zarili"
(the golden), which is a yellow flower from Khorasan, and also from
the leaves of the vine, a bright yellow.[309] They import indigo from
Shastra (or from India), by the Khurum river. He says these dyes are
perfectly fast, leaving no trace on a wetted rubber, whereas the
European dyes they sometimes use come off freely.
Pliny says the Gauls had invented dyes counterfeiting the purple of
Tyre; also scarlet, violet, and green, all of these were dipped in the
juices of herbs.[310]
Vitruvius says the Romans extracted dyes from flowers and fruits, but
he neither specifies nor describes them.
The ancient Highland tartans were dyed with bark of alder for black,
bark of willow for flesh colour. A lichen growing on stones supplied
their violets and crimson.[311] The lichen on the birch-tree gives a
good brown; heather gives red, purple, and green.[312]
Thus we see that pure colours for dyeing textiles have been extracted
from vegetable substances--herbs, wood, seeds, flowers and fruits,
mosses and sea-weeds;[313] mineral substances--earths, sands, ores,
metals, rusts, and stones; animal substances--both of land, water, and
air; beasts, fishes, shells, birds, and insects.
It is evident, from the derivation of the word, that there were
chromatic scales in colour before the phrase was ever applied to
music.
The Greeks and Romans are supposed to have understood chromatic scales
of tints--animal, vegetable, and mineral--and except with the
intention of producing startling effects, they did not mix them. They
felt that each was harmonious as a whole, and, unlike the Egyptians,
they studied harmony. They arranged their scales according to the
materials from which they were extracted, and kept those from
different chemical sources apart, as being discordant.[314] One scale
was that of the iodine colours, of and from the sea. Marine products
are mostly iridescent. To comprehend this, think of the harmonious
interchange of delicate tints, called by the ancients "purple," on a
string of pearls. Shells and shell-fish, sea-weeds and fish, furnished
these dyes. They were called "conchiliata."
The chemistry of the arts of bleaching was not unknown to the
ancients; but they reserved and regulated it for certain purposes,
preferring to retain at least a part of the original colouring, as
shades of grounding which served, as a surface glaze does in painting,
to connect and harmonize the superinduced tints.
Experiments with the object of reviving this mode of producing
harmonious combinations, have been made lately at the Wilton Carpet
Works, by dyeing shades of colour on unbleached goat's and camel's
hair, and sheep's wool; and the tones produced are beautifully soft
and rich.
M. Edouard Charton ascribes the great change in the modern scales of
colours to the discovery by the French, in the Gobelins, of a pure
scarlet dye, the use of which made it necessary to raise the tone of
all other colours. He says that scarlet was formerly represented by
the dye called kermes, which indeed was not scarlet, but altered from
crimson to something approaching it by the addition of narsingar, of
which the bright yellow gave the scarlet effect.
M. Chevreul, director of the dyeing department of the Gobelins, has
succeeded in composing the chromatic prism, to which I have already
alluded, containing 4420 different tones. We may take it for granted,
that from these may be selected any possible scale of tints required
for decorative work. This vast area for choice of our material will
impose on the artist of the future fresh responsibilities.
In the typical Oriental colouring, the whole arrangement was
traditional, and it was irreligious to depart from what had been fixed
by statute many centuries before, and only perfected by the experience
of many generations of men; and this veneration for traditional custom
has hitherto been prevalent in European art to a certain point. But
the old conservative perfection of unadulterated colour has already
been done away with. The freedom of experimental art is chartered, and
mercantile interests now, as ever, govern the supply of materials.
Our normal bad taste and carelessness has been cast back on the lands
which were the cradle of art, and we receive, to our surprise, gaudy,
vulgar, and discordant combinations from the East, whence we drew our
first inspirations. For the future we shall have to study ancient
specimens, and correct our errors by the help of their teaching to the
eye and mind.
Gas colours are at present our worst snares. They are in general very
beautiful; but they are so evanescent, and fade into such unexpected
and contradictory tones, that we cannot reckon upon them. When
embroidering with the coloured materials of the day, we are in
constant dread of what disastrous effect may be produced by the first
shaft of sunshine that may fall from our moderately illuminated sky,
through the uncurtained window.
The trade in colours can hardly be an honest one, till the means of
fixing each tint permanently is ascertained.[315] At any rate,
something should be done towards grouping them, with respect to their
enduring qualities, so that when they fade, if fade they must, they
may do so harmoniously, and in sympathy with each other; and while
they are in their first glow they should be selected, as much as
possible, from what Pliny calls natural colours,[316] which recall the
exquisite effects of nature, searched out and displayed by every sunny
gleam, reflected on each other in lovely tones, and subdued and veiled
by passing shadows. It is said that Mr. Wardle, of Leek, is now
seeking for dyes of pure unadulterated colours, and mordants to fix
them. He deserves all success.
The reason I have entered, in even so cursory a manner, into the
history of colours is my desire to point out the great value placed,
long ago, on the careful preparation of those used in ancient textile
art; and to show how our forefathers sought them out in many lands
and waters; how they noted their varieties; how they classed and
prized them for their endurance as well as for their pristine beauty;
how they paid their weight in gold or silver for certain culminating
tints; and how they, therefore, produced works which became matters of
history and landmarks in civilization.
FOOTNOTES:
[283] "Seeing, they saw not, neither did they
understand."
[284] See Pliny's "Natural History," which gives much
information on the subject.
[285] E. Curtius, "Greek History;" Engl. Trans., i. p.
438; Blümner's "Technologie," p. 216.
[286] Charpentier "differentiates in every normal eye a
sensibility for light, a sensibility for colour, and a
sensibility for form (a visual sensibility)."--See
"Modern Theories of Colour," _The Lancet_, August 19th,
1882, p. 276. We can perceive, by studying works of art,
how variously these gifts are distributed, or, at any
rate, how differently they are received and acted upon
by individual minds.
[287] The effect of colour on the brain is a subject
only just now beginning to attract attention.
Experiments on the insane have been made in Italy,
especially, I believe, at Venice; and it is said to be
ascertained that red and green are irritants, whereas
windows glazed with blue glass alternating with white
have sensibly calmed the nerves of the patients.
[288] Let us compare the beautiful creations of the
Venetian school with the demoralizing brightness of
aniline colours, or the opaque, earthy tints which some
call beautiful, mistaking their dulness for softness and
sobriety of colouring. But they, too, have their uses.
[289] Black and red are, in ecclesiastical work, the
emblems of mourning.
[290] The Bardic rules in early Britain enjoined three
simple colours: sky blue, the emblem of peace, for the
bard and poet; green, for the master of natural history
and woodcraft; spotless white (the symbol of holiness),
for the priest and Druid.
[291] The blind man said that red was like the sound of
a trumpet, which shows what a soul-stirring colour it
was in his mind's eye.
[292] "Purpura" is supposed to mean crimson velvet. It
came, like "cramoisi," to be a name for a tissue. Fr.
Michell quotes velvet of Vermeil-cramoisi, "violet and
blue cramoisi, and pourpre of divers colours," but he
says he never met with "pourpre blanche." Yule, ed.
1875, i. p. 67. Plano Carpini (p. 755) says the
courtiers of Karakorum were clad in "white purpura;" and
that on the first day of the great festival in honour of
the inauguration of Kuyuk Khan, all the Mogul nobles
were clad in pourpre blanche, the second day in ruby
purple, and the third in blue purple: on the fourth day
they appeared in Baudichin (cloth of gold). (Yule,
"Marco Polo," vol. i. p. 376.) White purple is also
named in the inventories of Sta. Maria Maggiore at Rome,
and those of Notre Dame in Paris. "Histoire du Tissu
Ancien, à l'Exposition de l'Union Générale des Arts
Décoratifs."
[293] François Le Normant, in his "Grande Grèce," tells
of the dye of the purple of Tarentum from the murex,
found in the Mare Piccolo. He says that Tarentine
muslins, woven from the filaments of the pinna dipped in
the dye of the murex, rivalled those of Cos. Le Normant
laments the total neglect of the murex in these days
(could its trade be revived?) Plutarch says that
Alexander the Great, having made himself master of Susa
(Shushan), found, amongst other riches of marvellous
value, "purple of Hermione" worth forty thousand talents
(Quintus Curtius says fifty thousand), which, though it
had been stored 190 years, retained all its freshness
and beauty. See Plutarch's "Lives," edited by J. and W.
Langhorne, vol. ii. p. 739; Blümner, i. p. 224-240. The
reason assigned for their dye being so perfect was that
the Susanians knew how to comb the wool to be dipped,
and prepare it with honey. According to Aristotle the
dress of Alcisthenes, the Sybarite, was dyed with this
purple from Shushan (Ciampini, Vet. Mon.).
[294] Semper gives us an account of iodine colours.
Some, he says, were extracted from sea-weeds, green and
yellow; the purples, when finest, from the shell-fish.
The Phœnician coasts gave the best purples; those of
the Atlantic the best blacks and browns. And thus he
completes the scale of iodine colours. See Semper, "Der
Stil," i. p. 206.
[295] Heaps of the shells of this "murex trunculus" have
been found at Pompeii, near the dyers' works. Hardouin
says that in his time they were found at Otranto, and
similar remains have been noticed at Sidon. Sir James
Lacaita informs me that the living shells are still
found along the shores of the Adriatic, as well as on
the wash near Argos. No doubt the Phœnicians traded
first in the produce of the Sidonian and Tyrian coasts,
though they afterwards went farther afield in collecting
their dyes. Auberville says that the purple of the
Romans was a deep violet (double dyed, purpuræ dibaphæ),
and that this colour was Asiatic. The Phœnicians
traded in it, and sold it for its weight in silver.
Instead of fading in the sunshine, its colour
intensified. The enduring nature of this colour is
proved by the purple fragments from a Greek tomb in the
Crimea of about 300 B.C., described in chapter on
stitches, p. 217. See "Histoire du Tissu Ancien, à
l'Exposition de l'Union Générale des Arts Décoratifs."
[296] Though really red of the purest colour, it
doubtless received its name of Tyrian purple as being
one of the materials of the amethystine double dye. The
web or fleece was first dipped in the dye of Purpura,
and then in that of the Buccinum, or they reversed the
process to give a different tint. This is Pliny's
account of the process of dyeing, which is very simple,
and gives no details. Semper says that the ancients
called black and white the two extremes of purple--white
the thinnest, and black the thickest or most solid layer
of colour. Both were thus considered as colour. (Semper,
i. pp. 205-7.) As long as there is light, black always
appears to be either blue, or brown, or green, till with
darkness all colour disappears.
[297] Exod. xxv. Semper (i. p. 103) suggests that these
rams' skins were dyed with the periploca secamone--a
plant still used for this purpose in Egypt.
[298] Jeremiah xxii. 14.
[299] Ezekiel xxiii. 14: "The images of the Chaldeans."
"The men portrayed in vermilion on the wall."
[300] Villiers Stuart, "Funeral Tent of an Egyptian
Queen." See Appendix.
[301] 2 Chron. ii. 7.
[302] The Arabs received the kermis from Armenia, and
the name was originally "Quer-més," "oak-apple." Sardis
was famed for its kermes dye. See Birdwood, "Indian
Arts," p. 238, ed. 1880, and Yule's "Marco Polo," i. p.
67.
[303] Isa. ii. 18.
[304] Renouf's Hibbert Lectures, p. 67-69. It may be
called balance, rather than harmony.
[305] Wilkinson, "Manners of the Ancient Egyptians,"
vol. iii. pp. 301-3.
[306] Blümner, p. 220. See Pliny, "Natural History,"
xxxv. 42.
[307] Semper, i. p. 248.
[308] See Birdwood's "Indian Arts," p. 272. In the Code
of Manu, black garments are sacred to the Indian Saturn,
yellow to Venus, and red to Mars. See Birdwood, p. 235.
[309] See Floyer's "Unexplored Baluchistan," pp. 278,
373, 406. The Persians produce their deep yellow from
the skin of the pomegranate, by boiling it in alum.
Major Murdoch Smith describes the Persian processes for
dyeing patterns red and black in textiles. The Italian
women dye their own dresses in the pomegranate yellow;
also in turmeric yellow, and other vegetable dyes.
[310] Pliny, "Natural History," xxii. 3. Unfortunately,
Pliny seldom condescends to give us the recipes for
dyeing processes.
[311] Logan's "Scottish Garb."
[312] See Elton's "Origins of English History."
[313] The Cretan tincture was extracted from a plant
which Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny respectively
name. The last calls it the _Phycos thalassion_. This
was not a sea-weed, but a lichen--probably the same from
which the orchid purple of modern art is prepared. See
Birdwood, "Indian Arts," i. p. 238.
[314] The same scale of colour varies as much on the
different textiles employed, as it does from the colours
extracted from other chemicals. Silk, wool, cotton,
flax, give very different results. The colouring matter
may be identical, yet you cannot place them side by side
without being aware that they may be repellant, instead
of harmonious in tone. The scale is sometimes removed to
another pitch, and they will no more harmonize than
instruments that have not been attuned to the same
diapason. See Redgrave's Report on Textile Fabrics.
[315] With the changes in colouring materials has arisen
the necessity for discovering new mordants. The gas
colour of madder is exactly the same chemically as that
extracted from the vegetable, but the old mordant does
not fix it, and it changes very soon to a dull
blackish-purple hue.
[316] Pliny, "Natural History," ix. 12. The most
unnatural, and the most disagreeable dyes, are the
magentas. Sir G. Birdwood tells us that the Maharajah of
Cashmere has adopted a most efficient plan for the
suppression of magenta dyes within his dominions--first,
a duty of 45 per cent. on entering the country, and at a
certain distance within the frontier, they are
confiscated and destroyed.