Colors make many things in life happier. How boring it would be if everything were only black and white. Nowadays colors can be made artificially in all variants. But there are also so-called natural colors. Those colors are obtained from natural raw materials such as certain plants or animals (insects). With the dyes obtained therefrom, fabrics (eg wool, textiles and leather) can be colored, but some dyes are also used for coloring food (eg sweets). However, the number of natural colors is very limited compared to synthetic dyes.
Natural dyes with better colors
Natural colors are often much more subdued and more beautiful in light quality than synthetic colors, which can be garish and shrill. The most common natural dyes come from plants such as the dyes madder, indigo and saffron and others from insects such as carminic acid. Vegetable dyes have been used for centuries. Until well into the nineteenth century, all fabrics were colored with natural pigments.
Madder has been used as a coloring agent for centuries
One of the most important natural dyes comes from the madder plant, which dye was used as early as 1500 BC. Many centuries later, the Netherlands had a production area in Goeree-Overflakkee. The dye was recovered in a co-firing process.
Madder in Tutankhamun’s belt
Madder (Rubia tinctorum) is a plant that grows 60 to 90 centimeters high. The madder’s rhizomes can poke 50 to 100 centimeters into the ground. The thick rhizomes have thin secondary roots from which a pigment can be extracted for a red dye. This dye is already present in classical antiquity in Asia and Egypt. As early as 1500 BC it was already used to color textiles, remnants of which have been found in Egypt, Corinth and in the ruins of Pompeii. One of the oldest examples is a belt of Tutankhamun found in his tomb.
Production area Goeree-Overflakkee
Madder was probably already being cultivated in the Netherlands in the twelfth century. From the fifteenth century, the area around Goeree-Overflakkee was the most important production area. After the color of the madder could be synthesized a few centuries later, the cultivation almost completely disappeared.
Processed in the co-firing
The crop was harvested two or three years after planting. The roots were then processed in a so-called co-firing. A co-firing shed is a shed with a few spaces where the madder was first dried and then crushed to powder. Heavy wooden rammers were used for the stamping, which used a kind of pile driver to crush the dried madder into powder. This only happened at night because it was thought that the color quality would deteriorate due to daylight.
Other natural dyes
Besides madder there are some other important natural dyes such as indigo, saffron and carminic acid.
Indigo
Although the indigo used today is mostly synthetic, it does originate from a plant. The natural indigo was mainly extracted from tropical plants of the genus Indigofera. Dye from those plants was the only basis for indigo until about 1900. Indigo has been used as a coloring agent for centuries in China, India and Japan. Other countries where indigo already existed was ancient Egypt, Greece, Peru and also in Rome and Africa. Indigo came to Europe at the end of the fifteenth century via the sea route discovered by Vasco da Gama. Several centuries later, German chemist Adolf von Baeyer discovered a chemical structure to recreate indigo, and a commercial production technique was developed in 1897. The result was that around 1913 almost all natural indigo was replaced by synthetic ones.
Saffron
Saffron is a colorant extracted from the orange-red pistils of the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus). The styles and pistils are dried in the sun or by means of a warm air flow in drying cabinets. The top part of the dried pistils produces the best quality saffron. Saffron is not only used as a textile dye, but also in the kitchen and for drinks, including for bread dough, desserts, fernet, liqueurs, milk, paella, risotto, rice dishes, sauces and fish dishes. The coloring agent has a bitter taste but a pleasant aroma. Only very little saffron is needed for coloring liquid.
Carminic acid
The red color of carminic acid is obtained from the insect cochineal, which is a species of shield aphids. Many pink cookies, sweets or desserts are colored with carminic acid and basically everything that is red or pink contains carminic acid. Other products include fruit sprinkles, campari, crisps, soft drinks, savory pies, cough pastilles, pickled cherries, jams, chewing gum, M&Ms, pills, puddings, red drinks, pink rusk mice with mice, fruit juices, fish, wine gums and yogurt drinks. The pigment is obtained from three different scale insects, the most common of which is the American louse. The American cochineal louse has been cultivated on disc cacti in South America and Mexico in North America for centuries. The louse feeds on the sap of the cactus. The pigment of carminic acid is obtained only from the female lice which is dried, ground and filtered.