History of dyeing

History of dyeing

            The process of dyeing came into being many years ago.  At first it was practiced by hands and natural dyes derived from plants were used. This is practiced even today . Nowadays machine dyeing is also done as it is much cheaper and saves a lot of time. Various artificial dyes are used nowadays as they are cheaper and permanent

The history of dyes is too old. We even find the use of natural dyes like heena, turmeric in Vedas. Red Indians living in North America painted animal skins that they prepared for clothing.  Till the last century all dyes were derived from flowers, leaves, twigs, roots, berries or from animal substances.

The early use of indigo in widely dispersed areas has been proved by the unearthing of indigo-dyed fabrics from Egyptian’s tombs and from the graves of the Incas of Peru. This blue dyestuff was Obtained from the leaves of plants of the genus Indigofera, a species of which was cultivated in India thousands of years ago. Indigo was introduced in Europe in 1516.

Probably the most famous, and surely the most expensive dye of ancient times was Tyrian purple, an animal dye. It was Obtained from a small sac in the body of a snail-like marine mollusk, Murex brandaris, found along the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. Each mollusk shell had to be broken individually, and each small sac of 3,880,000 mollusks was required to make a single pound of the dyestuff. Only royalty and the very wealthy, therefore, could afford to wear apparel colored with this dye, hence the expression “born to the purple.”

By introduction of Indigo in the 16^th century by Portuguese, Dutch and English the first textile dyeing company was opened. Other natural dyes like Cochineal, Turmeric, Wood, Madder, and Henna were also used.

The fist synthetic dye was invented in the year 1856 by  Sir William Henry Perkin, an English chemist. He was working with coal tar derivative aniline when he accidentally discovered that the product of aniline oxidation was a good dye. After his invention he started the production of his new purple dye mauve in his factory.

In 1868 Alizarin a natural dye was produced synthetically. In 1880 indigo was also synthesized. Till the second world war Germany was the largest supplier of dyes.

Mordant are chemical substances formerly used to confer affinity for textile fibers to natural and early synthetic dyes. For producing bright red shades on cotton , Alizarin is used with aluminum-salt mordant. For printing cotton and dyeing wool, chromium was mixed with azo and basic dyes and used. Tannin and sodium stannate were used to form insoluble salts with basic dyes on silk.