stockholm 103: (no title)

For a stater of wool take a kotyle of urine (and) put in the bowl with the urine and mix there, 4 drachmas of alkanet bark, 1 drachma of native soda (and) 1 drachma of raw Cyprian misy until it appears to you to be good. However, take away the first scum, which is white and untouched by the mixture. But when the es- sences of the substances appears to have gone from them, then lift the basket up and press it out properly in the basin. Throw the sub- stances away, but put the mordanted wool in and produce (the) purple on it. Make a test beforehand (that is), put a flock of wool in underneath (the surface) with the hand and look at it. The vessel in which the boiling is done should. however, on account of the fre- quent boiling over, contain sixfold (the volume). When the wool is suitable then hang and drain it until you have obtained the luster.

introduction:

The objective was to recreate recipe S103 as close to the original as possible. It was clear straight away that it would not be an easy task. Even if the recipe was much more detailed than some others, it still raised a lot of questions. The first issue was measurements: kotyle, stater and drachma. They needed to be converted into modern units. The other problem was the mysterious “Cyprian misy” – the substance needed to be identified. The supposed outcome was a purple colour.

According to the recipe, 4 ingredients were needed:

• Urine – 1 kotyle = between about 528 and 600 millilitres (I used this amount of water with ammonia, for details about ammonia see below)

• Alkanet bark – 4 drachmas = 17.2 g

• Native soda – 1 drachma = 4.3 g

• Raw Cyprian misy – 1 drachma = 4.3 g

The given amount was suitable enough to dye 1 stater of wool = 1.3 kg. I halved the amount for the recipe and used it to dye 10 g of wool. Amounts were established with a help of sizes.com (online units encyclopedia, further bibliography there). The recipe was quite detailed about the necessary equipment: the vessel should be big enough to contain 6 times the amount of the dyestuff. Also, some sort of basket was needed to serve as a strainer (from the material flexible enough to be bent and squeezed). I have used a modern 8 l stainless steel pot and a plastic mesh strainer. The fibre mentioned in the recipe is wool. I have used fibre from Shetland sheep fleece, mechanically spun and scoured with pH- neutral detergent and thoroughly cleaned. The wool was mor- danted in 10% alum, by simmering it (at about 60 – 80 Celsius de- grees) and left overnight. To eliminate the possible influence of minerals in tap water in the final colour, I have used deionized water for dyeing (tap water was however used for scouring and mordanting wool). The temperature was also indicated: the recipe mentions a couple of times ‘boiling’, but it is unclear how precise it is in this matter (or if the translation was accurate). From my dyeing practice I am aware that boiling is rarely more effective than lower temperatures and in some combinations may be quite damaging to fibres. I de- cided to keep the lower temperature, following the suggestion of Jenny Dean (2010). The first step was to obtain native soda (natron). As I had none in my possession, I prepared some according to the advice on the website Sesh Kemet (for details see link in Bibliography below) from a combination of sodium bicarbonate, sodium chloride, and sodium sulfate and sodium carbonate. Alkanet bark was bought from the online craft shop, Dyeing Crafts (https://dyeing-crafts.co.uk). The usage of urine was problematic. Due to practical concerns (I live in a flat and have no open space to experiment) I needed to re- place stale urine with ammonia (as it is widely accepted equivalent in modern dyeing, see Dean 2014). Ammonia was received from ammonium bicarbonate (commonly used as a leavening agent in baking). As in available modern recipes, to be used as an assist, ammonium bicarbonate was first diluted in water in proportion to 1 part for 3 parts of water. Approximately 30 g of ammonium bicar- bonate was used. This amount of the substance during the process of dyeing decomposed into (among the other ones) 10 g of ammo- nia. This amount was divided into two halves, each for one dyeing bath. The most mysterious component was ‘raw Cyprian misy’. Pliny the Elder, The Natural History wrote about misy: ‘it sparkles like gold, and when triturated, it presents a sandy or earthy appearance, like chalcitis’ and modern researchers suggest that it could be ei- ther pyrite or chalcopyrite (Estaugh et al, 2008). I have decided to prepare two dyeing baths, each with one mineral. I crushed each of them in a granit mortar for a fine powder and added to dyebaths. I started the dyeing process itself soaking two portions of ground dried alkanet root in water with dissolved ammonia (as described above) for about one week. After this time I have added natron to each portion. Also, to bath 1 I added chalcopyrite, and pyrite to bath 2. Each bath was simmered for about 1 hour and left overnight to cool down, then strained. A sample of wool was put into each dye- ing bath, again simmered for about 1 hour and left to cool over- night, taken out, washed and dried.

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