Amaranth (known in the USA as Red no 2) is a red dye used to dye wool and silk and in photography. Although banned for use in food, drugs and cosmetics by the FDA amaranth is used to colour food in other parts of the world. Research Amaranth
Annatto is an orange-red colouring matter, obtained from the pulp surrounding the seeds of Bixa Orellana, a shrub native to tropical America, and cultivated in Guiana, St Domingo, and the East Indies. It was sometimes used as a dye for silk and cotton goods though it does not produce a very durable colour, but it is much used in medicine for tinging plasters and ointments, and to a considerable extent by farmers for giving a rich colour to cheese, and by the food industry as a food colouring. Research Annatto
Archil or orchil is a red, violet, or purple colouring matter obtained from various kinds of lichens, the most important of which are the Roccella tinctoria and the Roccella fuciformis, natives of the rocks of the Canary and Cape Verde islands, Mozambique and Zanzibar, South America, etc, and popularly called dyer's-moss. The dye was used for improving the tints of other dyes, as from its want of permanence it could not be employed alone. The aniline colours largely superseded it. Cudbear and litmus are of similar origin. Research Archil
Blue is one of the seven colours into which the rays of light divide themselves when refracted through a glassprism, seen in nature in the clear expanse of the heavens; the term is also applied to a dye or pigment of this hue.
The substances used as blue pigments are of very different natures, and derived from various sources; they are all compound bodies, some being natural and others artificial. They are derived almost entirely from the vegetable and mineral kingdoms. The principal blues used in painting are ultramarine, which was originally prepared from lapis-lazuli or azure-stone - a mineral found in China and other oriental countries - but, as now prepared, it is an artificial compound of china-clay, carbonate of soda, sulphur, and charcoal; Prussian or Berlin blue, which is a compound of cyanogen and iron; blue bice, prepared from carbonate of copper; indigo blue, from the indigo plant. Besides these, there are numerous other blues used in art, as blue-verditer, smalt- and cobalt-blue, from cobalt, lacmus or litmus, etc.
Before the discovery of aniline or coal-tar colours dyers chiefly depended for their blues on woad, archil, indigo, and Prussian blue, but now a series of brilliant blues are obtained from coal-tar, possessing great tinctorial power and various degrees of durability.
Blue as a colour ranges from green-blue (turquoise) through to purple-blue (indigo).
Alice blue - A very light greenish-blue colour.
Aquamarine - A bluish-green colour.
Azure - A deep blue colour reminiscent of the sky.
Aquamarine - A pale greenish-blue colour.
Bice blue - A medium blue colour
Cambridge blue - A light blue colour.
Cobalt blue - A deep blue colour with a greenish-tint. The colour of old blue glass.
Brazil-wood a kind of wood yielding a red dye, obtained from several trees of the genusCaesalpinia, of the order Leguminosae, natives of the West Indies and Central and South America. The best kind is Caesalpinia echinata; other varieties are Caesalpinia brasiliensis, Caesalpinia orista and Caesalpinia Sappan. The wood is hard and heavy, and as it takes on a fine polish it is used by cabinet-makers for various purposes, but its principal use is in dyeing red. The dye is obtained by reducing the wood to powder and boiling it in water, when the water receives the red colouring principle, which is a crystallizable substance called brazilin. The colour is not permanent unless fixed by suitable mordants. Research Brazil-Wood
Calico-printing is the art of applying colours to cloth after it has come from the hand of the weaver in such a manner as to form patterns or figures. The art was originally brought to Britain from India, and was sometimes practised on linen, woollen, and silk, but most frequently upon that species of cotton cloth called calico. The process was originally accomplished by means of hand-blocks made of wood on which patterns or parts of patterns for each different colour were cut. These blocks were of various dimensions, according to the nature of the work, and where several colours were employed in one pattern, a block for each colour was necessary.
As an improvement in the method of printing from wooden blocks, especially where delicacy of outline was required, engraved copperplates were introduced about 1760; but the greatest improvement was effected by the introduction of cylinder printing about 1785, which had almost superseded the other methods, except for particular styles by 1900. The machinery then generally used consisted of various modifications of the cylinder printing-machine, in which a number of separate engraved cylinders were mounted, corresponding to the number of colours to be printed. Formerly the cloth had to pass once through the machine for every colour; but later, by an arrangement of machinery equally ingenious and effective, any number of cylinders were fitted on one machine, which acted on the cloth one after the other, and by this means the pattern was finished with a corresponding number of colours in the same time that was formerly employed to give one.
A great variety of methods have been employed in calico-printing, but they all fall under the general heads of dye-colours and steam-colours. Under the first head are included all the styles in which the pattern is printed on the cloth by a mordant - a substance which may have little or no colour itself, but has an affinity for the fibre on the one hand, and for the colouring matter on the other - the dye or colouring matter being subsequently fixed by dyeing on such parts of the cloth as have been impregnated with the mordant, and thus bringing out the pattern.
In steam-colour printing the colouring material is applied to the cloth direct from the printing-cylinder, and subsequently fixed by steaming. In steam-colours there is no limit to the number and variety of shades which may be produced, each colour-box on the cylinder printing-machine containing the whole ingredients essential to the production and fixation of a separate and distinct shade of colour. This process was superseding most of the other styles by the end of the Victorian era, the brilliant coal-tar colours so extensively used being almost entirely fixed by steaming.
The bodies used for fixing were tin mordants, tannic acid, etc, which were mixed with the dye-colours and printed together. The effects of calico-printing are varied by numerous other operations, such as the discharge-style, in which the cloth is first dyed all over, then printed in a certain pattern with discharge-chemicals, which either produce a pattern of some other colour, or one purely white, as in the Turkey-red bandanna handkerchiefs. The resist-style, in some respects, is the reverse of the discharge-style; the process being to print a pattern in certain chemicals, which will enable those parts to resist the action of the dye subsequently applied to all other parts of the cloth. After the prints have undergone the printing process they are submitted to a series of finishing operations, the object of which is to give to the fabrics a pleasing appearance to the eye. Research Calico-Printing
Camwood is a red dye-wood imported from tropical West Africa, and obtained from the Baphia nifida, a leguminous tree, of the suborder Caesalpinieae. This wood is of a very fine colour, and is used in turnery for making knife handles and other similar articles. The dye obtained from it is brilliant, but not permanent. It is called sometimes Bar-wood, though this name belongs also to another tree. Research Camwood
Cochineal is a dye-stuff consisting of the dried bodies of the females of a species of insect, the Coccus Cacti a native of the warmer parts of America, particularly Mexico, and found living on a species of cactus called the cochineal-fig. The insects are brushed softly off, and killed by being placed in ovens or dried in the sun, having then the appearance of small berries or seeds. A pound of cochineal contains about 70,000 of them. The finest cochineal is prepared in Mexico, where it was first discovered, and Guatemala; but Peru, Brazil, Algiers, the East and West Indies, and the Canary Islands have also produced cochineal more or less success. Cochineal produces crimson and scarlet colours, and is used in making carmine and lake. Research Cochineal
Abbreviations
Research Abraum
