Dyeing - History

History

Archaeologists have found evidence of textile dyeing dating back to the Neolithic period. The earliest surviving evidence of textile dyeing was found at the large Neolithic settlement at Çatalhöyük in southern Anatolia, where traces of red dyes, possibly from ochre, an iron oxide pigment derived from clay), were found. In China, dyeing with plants, barks, and insects has been traced back more than 5,000 years. Early evidence of dyeing comes from Sindh province in Pakistan, where a piece of cotton dyed with a vegetable dye was recovered from the archaeological site at Mohenjo-daro (3rd millennium BCE). The dye used in this case was madder, which, along with other dyes such as indigo, was introduced to other regions through trade. Natural insect dyes such as Tyrian purple and kermes and plant-based dyes such as woad, indigo and madder were important elements of the economies of Asia and Europe until the discovery of man-made synthetic dyes in the mid-19th century. The first synthetic dye was William Perkins's mauveine in 1856, derived from coal tar. Alizarin, the red dye present in madder, was the first natural pigment to be duplicated synthetically in 1869, a development which led to the collapse of the market for naturally grown madder. The development of new, strongly colored synthetic dyes followed quickly, and by the 1870s commercial dyeing with natural dyestuffs was disappearing.