Heather Bogart

ontario, canada

stockholm 87: Mordanting

Boil chalcanthum and skorpiurus aim employ for any desired color. These substances, however, also mordant all kinds of stones and skins. Translator’s note: The term “chalcanthum” was used to denote various products of the weathering of iron and copper pyrites and hence was either copper or iron sulfate or mixtures of these salts. The Greek word “skorpiurus” was, according to some, a name given to one of a species of sapindaceous plants. 

introduction:

Other recipes referred only to ‘mordant as previously described’, and this recipe is the main mordant recipe in the papyrus. As such, this seemed a good prospect for mordanting. There’s limited evidence for chalcanthum including iron, but most sources have ‘Chalcanthum’ translated as blue vitriol or copper vitriol, which is copper sulphate. Pliny talks about it being related to copper: “The Greeks, by the name which they have given to it, have indicated the relation between shoemakers' black and copper; for they call it "chalcanthum."” I decided to use modern copper sulphate at a concentration that is consistent with modern methods (2% weight of fibre).  The other component of the mordant bath is a sapindaceous plant. The plant family Sapindaceae, is also known as the soapberry family. Most interesting to us is the Sapindus branch of the family which are soap nuts. Soap nuts contain saponin, which are both water and fat soluble, which provides soap properties. These are readily available in dried form from bulk food stores. Based on the recommendations that came with the soap nuts, I used a single soap nut with the yarn samples, and two soap nuts with the fleece sample.

 

Stockholm 107: Dyeing in Rose Colour

Rose color is dyed in the following way. Smear the rolls of wool with ashes, untie them, and wash the wool in the liquid from potter's clay. Rinse it out and mordant it as previously described. Rinse it out in salt water after mordanting and use rain water (which is so) warm that you cannot put your hand in it. Then take for each mina of wool a quarter of a mina of roasted and finely pulverized madder and a quarter of a choenix of bean meal. Mix these together by the addition of white oil, pour it into the kettle and stir up. Put the wool in the kettle and again stir incessantly so that it becomes uniform. When it appears to you to have absorbed the dye liquor, however, brighten it by means of alum, rinse it out again in salt water, and dry it in the shade with protection from smoke.

introduction:

There are a lot of variables in this recipe, and a lot of choices to be made and questions about the function of various choices. There is also some debate about what exactly some of the ingredients are, and I’d like to explore those options. 

This recipe has three main parts to it. The pre-treatment, the mordanting (covered in another recipe) and finally the dye itself. 

Pre-treatment: This recipe appears to start with raw fleece, and I chose a Rideau Arcott fleece. It is a Canadian breed and nicely middle of the road for traits. Not too greasy, neither coarse nor fine, not too crimpy. I sprinkled it generously with ashes retrieved from a pizza oven, after sifting out bits of charcoal. The ashed wool was soaked in water with white clay. Ambient temperature (15C) and hot (approx. 70C) water were both tested. The wool was then well rinsed.

Mordanting: See recipe 87 (2% weight of fibre copper sulphate and soap nut berries)

Dyeing: As there was a wide variety of choices at this point, I explored more options with mordanted yarn to decide what route I wanted to go with. I did 8 yarn samples of various combinations to examine the options before I decided what combination to use with the pre-treated fleece. The yarn was mordanted as per recipe 87, but not pre-treated with clay. All of the fleece and yarn was rinsed with salt water (35g/l salt in water) and then rinsed again in hot water. The recipe called for rain water, due to season, I used melted snow heated on the stove to approximately 70C.  

Mina is accepted as a measure of weight in the Roman system of measurement. For each mina of wool, S107 uses ¼ mina of dyestuff. More interesting is the addition of a quarter of a choenix of bean meal for each mina of wool. Choenix is a measure of volume, and is not quite so easily dismissed by ratio.  Roman measurements have the choenix cereal measurement comes in at 361.6 ml.Also in that same Encyclopedia, we can see that depending on circumstance, a mina can be anywhere from 409.31 g to 606.5g, with the heaviest one being listed as for commodities, and so that is the value of a mina that I chose.  To sum up, for every 606.5g of wool, we need 151.62g of madder and 90.4 ml of bean meal.  The options for bean meal are fermented or not, and chickpea meal or faba bean meal. The options for white oil are more varied. There is the potential that the mention of ‘white oil’ is a translation error. S153 is basically an identical version of S107 and calls for vinegar instead of the white oil. Halleux’s French translation also translates όξος to vinegar rather than oil. I decided to test both oil and vinegar. For oils, I tested both olive oil and castor oil. For vinegar I tested both white wine and red wine vinegar. I further tested if the madder mixture was fermented by leaving two samples to sit at room temperature for a week. The samples were rinsed in a 10% weight of fibre alum solution and then rinsed in salt water before drying.

  • Sample 1: 15g madder 10 ml chickpea meal 125 ml white wine vinegar Fermented

  • Sample 2: 15g madder 10 ml chickpea meal 125 ml olive oil Fermented

  • Sample 3: 15g madder 10 ml chickpea meal 125 white wine vinegar

  • Sample 4: 15g madder 10 ml chickpea meal 125 ml olive oil

  • Sample 5: 15g madder 10 ml chickpea meal 30 ml castor oil

  • Sample 6: 15g madder 10 ml chickpea meal 125 ml red wine vinegar

  • Sample 7: 15g madder 10 ml chickpea meal 

  • Sample 8: 15g madder

I decided on the combination of faba bean meal, castor oil and madder as my dye bath ingredients for the clay washed fleece. My fleece weighed 142 g (weighed dry after the clay process), and so I used 35.5g of madder, 52 g of castor oil and 21.16 ml of fava bean meal. The madder and bean meal were mixed together with 52g of castor oil to become a thick uniform paste and then that paste was mixed into the dye bath and stirred well. The wool was added and stirred carefully. I left it in the pot on low heat to stay quite warm for an hour or so, before removing the wool into a bath of 10% alum solution. After rising in the alum bath, it was then rinsed in salt water and left to dry.

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