The Lady of Susa: Reconstructing the clothing of Achaemenid Persia (Part 4)

Today we dye!

Dye, not die.... Although if done improperly, I imagine one could accidentally do both.

I'll start off with the "big" dye project:

Saffron.

 Saffron pickers via

Yes, I'm going to dye with saffron. It is the only dye in this costume that I can do accurately (I'm hoping this doesn't bite me in the bottom later on) as true Tyrian purple is impossible for someone of my dyeing capabilities, and regular murex-dyed cloth is next to impossible.

 So, without further ado, I present to you my attempt to dye with saffron the way my ancestors did.

I should mention, before we begin, that while all these ingredients are used in food or food production in one way or another, the two mordants I'm using can be toxic and lethal if ingested in large enough amounts, and under these circumstances, with the amounts we're using, they are in the toxic range. In addition, they can cause irritation if coming in contact with eyes or other mucus membranes like your nose and mouth. So use a mask and gloves if you want to try this yourself.

Ok, so originally we were going to attempt to do a test run of this on swatches, but we decided against that for two reasons, time, and the fact that while the mordants are reasonably priced, the saffron that we'd have to used to "test" was... well, a waste of saffron. So three days after testing the swatches, we threw them to the side and just started with the shoes as our "test".

Anyhow, we start with the mordant. I'm using alum, as alum is least likely to cause discoloration, and "alumen", as it was once known by, in both the "pure" and "iron tainted" forms existed back then and were known as mordants. In fact, they knew so well about alum as a mordant back in the day, that they knew mixing the iron-tainted alum with pomegranates would produce black, which was surprisingly a difficult color to produce in antiquity.

In case you're unfamiliar with alum, this is what it looks like.

Potassium Alum Sulphate, or just Alum, via

You can get it at the grocery store, but I prefer to buy it online since the grocer tends to charge about $5 for a little tiny thing of it, and this 1 pound bag was only $12. You need a lot of alum if you're going to use it as a mordant. About four ounces per quart of water... and then whatever amount of fabric you can comfortably fit in if I've read right (which I hope I did, because that's what I'm using, I think).

Now, because this is linen, it is a three day process. To properly mordant it, you need to do it over the course of the day, beginning warm, then allowing to settle at room temperature. This is because, unlike animal proteins that more readily accept dye, linen and other cellulose fibers tend to not take kindly to staying colored for long (I know first hand from carelessness. I've accidentally gotten plenty of saffron on my cotton towels and on a sudreh or two, only to find that a couple of washes later, it had all but disappeared.)

Not that this garment is intended to be washed, but in the event that something does spill on it, or it gets dirty in any other way, I would definitely like to have the ability to properly clean it.... After all, a lot of effort is going into this!

So we start the mordant bath out with alum in a stainless steel pot. This is important, as aluminum, copper, and iron pots can all cause their own mordant to occur and thus change the outcome of the color drastically. If you don't have a stainless steel pot, then use an enamel pot, but make sure the enamel is NOT scratched, scuffed, or otherwise compromised.

A note; once you use a pot for dyeing, it's best not to use it ever again for food, as it could be contaminated with toxins that will work their way into your food with use, no matter how good you think you've cleaned it. I also recommend a pot that has a straining or steaming insert. The reason being that fabric likes to catch air, which causes it to float. This is not good for dying or mordanting, as it will cause uneven distribution. So putting this insert in will help keep the fabric submerged for extended periods of time. Very important when dealing with cellulose dyes.

Ok, so onto the process. We'll start off with the shoes to dye, so that's what you'll be seeing in the pictures. We started off by washing them, along with the rest of the linen, in the hottest water the machine could muster with washing soda and synthrapol. The hot water was to preshrink, the synthrapol was to remove any residue on the fibers that may have been left there from production, and the washing soda was to weaken the waxy outer-coating naturally found on linen fibers to allow for the adherence of mordants and later they dye.


From there, we dissolve some of the alum into hot water, and then put it on the stove to simmer.

Once it simmers, we add in the fabric. The fabric MUST be wet when you add it, or else it will cause streaking later on.

As you can see, the fabric, despite being wet when I added it, still had trapped air in it that puffed up and caused it to float. After numerous attempts to beat the air bubbles out of it as I stirred, I realized I could just set the strainer/steamer into it. This was done after the water began to simmer and the heat was turned off. I gave a final stir and then sumberged the cloth beneath the water with the pot-insert.

Be very careful to not boil your water, boiled water will suspend the mordant into the air, not your fabric, and we don't want that to happen!

After the pot had cooled down, I moved it into my bottom oven to store out of the way over night. If you only have one oven in your house and you plan on using it, then set the pot aside somewhere else, safe away from your children and pets if you have them.

The next afternoon began step two.

I removed the shoes from the alum bath using my stirring stick and ran them under warm water to rinse. ALWAYS RINSE. I cannot stress how important it is to the entire process. You don't want loose mordant hanging around. Once I gave a quick rinse, I took the shoes and squeezed the excess water out. I repeated this a few times to make sure they were "clean" before setting them down in the strainer insert which was resting on a paper towel.

I then poured the alum water down the drain while running tap water with it. It's good to keep the water running while draining the alum to dilute it further.

Once the pot was empty, I gave it a quick rinse (no soap, just a rinse) and filled it up again the same as last time. This time, however, I was very careful of my mask being secure and my dogs and child out of the area, as this next bath was the tannic acid mix.

Tannic acid in its raw form can be quite irritating to inhale, and dangerous to the eyes. So in addition to the mask and gloves that were already being worn for the alum, goggles were also in order (no, not the Steampunk ones, those won't save you). If you wear contacts, take them out before starting this process. Our researcher, who helped me during the process, learned the hard way that contacts are a no-no. (She's fine, don't worry, but her eyes did dry up and start to itch so we had to stop, flush them thoroughly, throw the lenses away, and put her glasses back on).

Anyhow, I should, historically, be using sumac leaves. Sumac is a delicious seasoning that I probably consume poundfuls of each year... Sumac leaves though, well, that's another story. I couldn't find them, mostly because the only place I thought to look for them thought I was going crazy (I'll give you a hint, it's my regular grocer.) So I had to settle for tannic acid from a dye supplier.

So, we mixed the tannic acid into the hot water in the pot, and again let it begin to simmer. It looked a bit like coffee actually.... That should have been a warning. You'll see ;)

Once it simmered, I dropped the wet, rinsed shoes into it.

After stirring them around a bit and letting the water come back to a simmer, the cloth got a bit darker.

Then I turned the heat off (this was all done relatively quickly, as you don't want to cook the fabric), put the strainer insert back in to submerge the cloth, and again moved it to the lower oven after it had cooled.

Day three came with another rinse. This time, because I was dealing with a potentially irritating acid, I was careful to pull the shoes out using the stick, and then to place them in the steam/strainer thingy before putting them under hot running water in the laundry sink. It's very important to thoroughly rinse out the tannic acid for the next step, since the alum, in order to work, needs to adhere to the fiber instead of the acid residue.

Important to note: To dispose of the rest of the tannic acid, you can neutralize it with some baking soda. Pour a little into the pot, stir it a bit, and then slowly pour down the drain while you have water running. Even though it's neutralized, you still don't want to pour it directly down without the water to dilute it.

Well, now it was quite apparent that I had probably gotten a bit overzealous about my tannic acid use, as you can see by the now VERY dark brown shoes. I expected them to turn brown, as that's what tannic acid does, but um... not THIS brow,. I probably could have halved my measurement for the tannic acid for this little vat.

The picture, by the way, is of AFTER I rinsed them, so... Yeah, next bath I can probably cut back a whole lot.

So, too much acid, but that's ok, because alum does tend to lighten things up, and that's our next step. I've done that already, so I'm sure I can do it again without messing up, right?

Right?

Oh yeah, except I forgot to stir the alum bath before dropping the shoes into it.

Pardon my language but... Shit.

The first shoe dropped in got noticeably lighter in splotches.... Not the look I'm going for. Worse yet, It was going to take 24 hours to see if the overnight soak would do any good to even it out, or at least make it less noticeable.

The water also tinted a weak brown immediately upon contact. I didn't remember that happening with the test swatch, but then again, the test swatch was done a while ago, and it was absolutely tiny compared to the shoes. Also my memory isn't so great and we didn't take pictures for the tests. So I'm not sure if that's the alum working to lighten the fibers, or if, despite my fifteen minutes of rinsing, I still left a sizable mount of tannic acid on the fibers, or, if that happened because I was ditsy and forgot to stir the alum.

Well, I guess I get to find out in the next step if everything worked out, don't I? I think you know where this is going.

Unfortunately, while the alum soak did lighten things up a bit, it didn't do it nearly as much as I had hoped. And sadly, the splotch is still on the heel of one of the shoes... **sigh** oh well, I've learned my lesson. 2oz of tannic acid is at least 1oz too much...

Costume-wise, they just got "dirty"... Haven't you ever walked around Cappadocia in saffron shoes? What else did you expect? ;)

Anyways, enough with the joking. Chances are, if I have enough time, I'll just go and remake the shoes. Probably next time out of leather. Surprisingly, I didn't find them that hard to assemble. Just incredibly tedious.

Now, onto the saffron.

Ground up saffron dumped into the pot. The bright yellow is barely making a dent on the tannic acid nightmare though.

Saffron has long been used as a dye, medicine, and flavoring in Iran. It's long history and the tedious and difficult labor of gathering the three stigmas each flower produces have made it an invaluable commodity.


So it's only natural then that we would use it for this outfit. Now I threw the test strip in with the shoes so you could see what it's SUPPOSE to look like, because I was not planning to take pictures of the full process when it comes to the dyeing of the uncut fabric. Too hard, as I was doing it on my own.

Actually, the shoes are a TEENSY bit more yellow than the picture shows.

See how sad the shoes look in comparison? I kept them in the bath though for as long as possible in hopes that it would make the color a bit more apparent. It did, but not much though... It's like dyeing blond on brunette without using a bleach to lighten first....

In retrospect, I should have also attempted to "exhaust" the saffron, but I was reluctant to do it, given that saffron is not solely a dye-stuff like madder, indigo, cochineal, etc. It's an edible, which means, I'm sure, that vinegar wouldn't have really  "exhausted" it.  And I wasn't about to try it on the actual fabric.

And here's the saffron dyed linen for the robe, how it's supposed to look. I learned my lesson and added only a teensy bit of tannic acid that time. (seriously, less than a teaspoon full per batch I think. The acid still blotted in a few places, but over all, it was way better). And I remembered to stir the alum!

Of course, if you're pressed for money, you can also dye with turmeric using the same process. The reason we didn't though, is because turmeric is just terrible at keeping its color. It has a reputation of a fast fade when around too much sunlight. Of course, if you store the garment properly, I guess that's not a problem. I'll probably try to dye the shoes with turmeric when I have time as a final attempt to yellow them before accepting defeat. When/if I do, I'll be posting the pictures on our page.



Reconstructing Tyrian Purple

Tyrian purple is our next dye project, and along with it, we're going to attempt to resist-dye a triangular pattern onto some plain silk trim so that we can use it on our veil and dress to mimic the patterns seen on clothing from the era.

I'm not hopeful about the latter, as it goes against all logic (dye is done hot, and wax melts when it's hot... so, um... What?) but we'll see.... I do have some beeswax to work with (that's actually for another thing, but it's a one or two pound block... That's a LOT of wax, if you weren't aware.) So it's worth a try.

But back to the basic dye. Tyrian purple is special, because in antiquity, there were two types of purple known. The first is a blue-purple, the second is a red-purple. Both were derived from sea snails.

Tyrian purple, is a more reddish purple it seems. Of course, I'm not guessing, I'm cheating and using an extant example from the era (there's a few examples of Tyrian purple still in existence, but this one down below is actually Achaemenid).

Achaemenid era Tyrian purple wool cloth, edged in trim depicting Achaemenid women, from this article

So we have two shades of purple dye. One was the one labelled "Royal Purple" and the other that was labelled "Cabernet". They can be purchased from Dharma Trading if you want to give this a try. But only on natural animal fibers. No synthetics, no plant fibers. The dye is for silks and wools.

Anyways, the "Cabernet" looks like it could actually be spot on for the purple in the above cloth. And that's why I ordered it, but why did I order the other one then?

Well, monitors portray colors differently, and I can't be certain that the "Cabernet" I got is the same color I saw. So I ordered the "Royal Purple" just in case.

Here's our test swatches.
0. Cabernet that I got a bit overzealous with...
1. Cabernet
2. Royal Purple
3. Cabernet base, Royal Purple over-dye
4. Royal Purple base, Cabernet over-dye
5. Cabernet (dominant) mixed with Royal Purple
6. Royal Purple (dominant) mixed with Cabernet

As always, we gave the fabric a pre-wash with the synthrapol.

I'm pretty sure I love number 4... The problem is, do I pick the one I love, or the one that matches the cloth? Ok, no brainer, I have to pick the one that matches best. But the problem is that I'm torn between them. Even the "Royal Purple" swatch matches some areas of this faded antique cloth.... The aging of this textile has, unfortunately made the decision THAT much harder.

Anyhow, for what appears to be the original, unfaded color, 1, 3, 5, and 6 seem to match up better when I put the swatches up against the monitor. 1 is the simplest, obviously, but it's not really "reconstructing" if I take a dye straight out of the jar and into the pot, is it?

Add to it, Tyrian purple was supposed to be a double-dye process, which makes 3 look all the more attractive, as that too is a double-dye process. But 5 and 6 seem... easier. Though I can't decide between the two, so... 3 it is. Cabernet base with a Royal Purple over-dye.

This double-dye method is for the best. It replicates the difficulty of producing a consistent color, which seemed to be a problem in the era. It is also a little more forgiving in case I mess up. And I'll probably appreciate it more in the end since I had to do the process so many times.

Oh, and please pardon my lack of photographs for this purple bit. I'm a night-owl as it is, and so I started the process later in the evening, and the pictures were not coming out right (too much flash, or none at all... There was nothing interesting anyways, not like the saffron)

You can kind of see that the final product did differ a bit from the swatch... I'm a little afraid to do another over-dye, just in case it turns out too dark. This color isn't bad, so I'd better not risk it.

Now to do the resist-dye method to produce the pattern, it was recommended that I purchase something called a tjanting. It's basically a hairless paintbrush-calligraphy pen hybrid. It looks like a paintbrush with all the hairs pulled out, but has a reservoir to hold hot wax in it and a tip to apply the wax evenly.

I didn't feel like spending $10 on one, so I just used one of the crappy paint brushes that I had laying around. The design didn't have to be perfect, it just had to work. I was pretty sure I could get decent lines with a paintbrush.

So I melted the wax in a makeshift double boiler (same way you would melt chocolate) and dipped in a brush... The first attempt was fine, not great, but not terrible either. The problems came when, you guessed it, I began to dip it in the dye.

The wax just slid off.

Gah!

Keep in mind I HAD let the dye cool quite a bit, but ok... So I cooled the dye a bit more, just enough to make it not melt the wax off, then dropped the ribbon in. Then I just followed the directions, same as with the other acid-dye baths.

The final product, sans wax. It's a bit messy, but I did a somewhat decent job, I think. I mean, given that I've never done it before now.

And these are the trims I was copying:

What I learned from this attempt at resist dyeing is that you HAVE to saturate the cloth COMPLETELY with the wax, or else it will dye through the back and then, well, duh. I very obviously did not do this in a few spots, but at least the majority of them came out alright... Oh, and if you're wondering what that blue thing is, it's the "Shout Color Catcher" that I threw into the wash to make sure the excess dye didn't bleed into the parts I took such pains to keep the dye away from.

I had to throw that in there, because unless you want to ruin your washing machine, you must remove ALL THE WAX from the resist-dyed fabric before washing it.

The easiest method for this is to wait until the wax cools, then peel it off. After you peel it off, set the dyed cloth between two sheets of regular printer paper and press with a very hot iron. The iron melts off any excess wax, which then saturates the paper, keeping everything clean and tidy. In addition, the heat from the iron probably help sets the color better too, since when dyeing the cloth with this method, you can't turn the heat up to the recommended temperature.

So yeah... I think that wraps up this post. The next one should be coming shortly, since it's just the pictures I need to get around to taking.


The Challenge: #12 Pretty, Pretty, Princesses

Fabric: Linen, cotton, and silk

Pattern: Self-drafted shoe pattern, but the rest of the fabric is uncut. The pattern for the trim came from palace paintings and a handful of surviving extant textiles.

Year: 6th century BCE

Notions: Saffron, alum, tannic acid, Acid dyes in purple, and beeswax

How historically accurate is it? Well, for the saffron dye, with the exception of WHERE the tannic acid came from and the pot that it was dyed in and stove it was dyed on... Ok, I'm getting too technical. The saffron is accurate, exactly how it was done 2500 years ago as far as I can tell. The purple though... Apart from the color and the fact that it was vat-dyed and in a two-step process, the purple's not accurate at all.

Hours to complete: About 221 hours. The linen and shoes were done in three separate batches (because of the size of the pot) and each step took 24 hours to complete. Then the dyeing itself took a few hours too, given all the test rounds with the purple and the three batches of saffron.

First worn: As with all posts in this series, the finished outfit will be worn to the viewing of the Cyrus Cylinder.

Total cost: Erm.... a lot. Saffron doesn't come cheap (if it does, it's not real saffron and you're getting cheated) The linen came with me from Iran, so I don't remember how much it cost back then, but nowadays it must run about $15 a yard, and there's 5 yards of it... Plus the mordants, washes, and acid dyes.... Maybe $150-200 US?