Tuesday 14 February 2012

More on Sarasa Vegetable Pigment Making Techniques


Madder Plants


Boiled madder roots. Note that the outside skin of the root is pigment rich not the tough sinewy inner core.


Madder pigment settling to the bottom. Repeat this several times to neutralize the dye bath.


Filtering the sediment with a coffee filter.


The final madder dye pigment ready to be refrigerated.

Madder, akane '茜' is the root that produces alizarin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alizarin the only completely light fast and stable red dye. Every brilliant red color on cloth found anywhere in the world through out history up until 1860ish was made from this root. Think of deep red Turkish and Persian carpets, Indian print cloth, red colored tartans etc. The Japanese version grows wildly around Fujino.

Here is the wiki link for a quick read on madder. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubia

Keeping it short...bring to a boil 100 grams of the roots in 2 liters of water, turn down the heat and simmer for twenty minutes. Remove the roots and filter the dye liquid through a medium mesh. Repeat the boil with another 2 liters of water. The roots can be used again and again to get paler shaded of pink on silk and wool. Making an extract you want the real dark stuff from the initial two boils.
Combine the two dye baths from the first and second boil. Add 10 grams of creme of tarter or the equivalent amount of aluminum mordant. The pH will be around 3. Use full spectrum pH paper to test. To neutralize the pH to 7 pour in ash alkaline until the mixture clouds up. (Creme of Tarter naturally clouds up when neutralized.) Pour the mixture into jars and let settle. Madder settles in about an hour. Remove the clear liquid and add more water to make sure the mixture is pure and neutralized. Repeat this three to four times.
Finally remove the clear water and pour the sediment into a coffee filter. You want the paste left in the filter. Scoop this out and put it in jar and keep refrigerated, It should keep for months if not years. This red pigment can be used as a stable paint with some binder on cloth or paper wood etc.

Madder has a long history and there are more than a few ways to extract the dye to get clear and deep colors. Another blog.

Sorry I was so cheap with lifted photos of sarasa on yesterday's blog. Here are a few from the kitchen today.


Left: Onion skins and cochineal. Middle: madder. Right (Yamaguchi san cut this stencil): combination. These are not finished yet. When it gets warmer they will get a background or accent color of indigo.

14 comments:

  1. Does your cedar ash include the bark?

    Keep experimenting and writing about them. It is so much fun to learn other technique that maybe we had not thought of. This Spring I will definitely experiential with these techniques you have just describe.

    Sandy

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    1. I get the ash form the local cedar lumber mill. They burn the scraps and does have some bark in it for certain. Just ask and I will try to fill in the blanks for you.
      Bryan

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  2. Very wonderful!

    Bryan, when I lived years ago in Maizuru, Kyoto, one day I saw a plant growing wild and my friend said it was 'inamorisou', which looks different from what I would consider Japanese Madder. I've searched for it online, but everything I've found on it is in Japanese and I can't read Japanese well at all. I don't know the kanji for this plant, but my friend said is a plant containing alizarin which was used for making a red dye. Do you know the kanji, or have you ever heard of this plant?

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    1. Dear Alfred: It grows right around my house. I will ask around and dig some up when the snow melts to see if I can find some red in it.
      Thank you for the lead.
      Bryan

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  3. How interesting, are we going to learn all this?

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    1. We will take a look at it. Our days are packed but I will squeeze in this as it is important when looking at Yuzen and tsujigahana cloth to have some idea of how they did it!

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  4. From a 2009 post on my blog afater a visit to the Quilt Museum in York where there was an exhibition of "Turkey Red":
    http://piecenpeace.blogspot.com/2009/11/quilty-day-out-in-york.html
    "The development of the red dye, from madder, made it possible to create quilts in red and white - as the red dye was colourfast and the whole lot wasn't at risk of ending up pink! The dye was big business in Scotland with the Dalmonach factory running 28 print machines in 1898, producing 25 million yards of fabric in addition to one million tons of dyed yarn per year. Designs included paisleys, florals and peacocks and were often gold and dark green on red. The Turkey red dye was most often used for everyday items - tablecloths and household linens, underwear and swimming costumes, shawls, coverlets, bandanas and kerchiefs and also for workers' clothing on the plantations of the West Indies."

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    1. Dear Lis:
      Thanks for the information. I keep piling up the info on madder and maybe one day I will experiment with it in depth myself. The spectrum of pinks to blood red on silk are so alluring.

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  5. great posts, Bryan. thanks for all the info. I grow madder and have tried every recipe but can't get a good dark red, I've been told it's my soil. can't wait to see it growing in Fujino. Will we dye with it??

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  6. I will prepare some cochineal and other dyes for stencil dying day! It takes a lot of madder and patience and ten other ingredients to really get a beautiful dark red. You need calcium to brighten the red. In Turkey they used blood and in India cow's milk.

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  7. Hello Thank you so much for this riveting blog post! I have so much enjoyed reading about your work. A few questions.
    Do you mean add creme de tartre AND your alum mordant. As you wrote 'or'.
    Are you raising the ph to neutral to bring out the red tones in the madder or is there another reason.
    Here in France it is traditional to use the wood from fruit trees to make ash water. I have never tried a conifer tree but I have noticed a difference in using oak and cherry wood. With cherry I seem to need less. I have also heard that in Thailand, maybe also in Japan, rice straw is used for making ash water.
    I have some weld sarasa settling at the moment, I hope to be using it on wool felt, I will let you know how I get on.
    Thank you once more.. Andie

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    1. Hi Andie:
      Either Alum or Creme of Tartar. There is a bit of guesswork as each dyestuff has a different amount of pigment per weight. The quality of the creme of tatar is not consistent. I am experimenting and hope to know what I am doing in few years! The pH is raised so that the dye is more stable. I suspect the ash liquid also acts as a back up mordant.
      In Japan I was taught to use straw ash to de-gum silk and act as pre-mordant on the de-gummed silk. When I studied indigo fermentation they were very particular that red pine ash be used. This was fine because I had a good supply from potter friends who only burned red pine for their climbing kilns. Later I used any tree ash as long as the pH from the first bath was over 11.
      Please keep me in the loop on your weld experiments. Today I made an alder cone lake and it looks great. It settled quickly.

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  8. i am so green with envy! your dyes are beautiful! i have so little time to dye these days... a little rust dyeing here and there. not much else. some day, i hope to travel to japan again and, if i'm very lucky, manage to stop in for a workshop with you!

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  9. this is so interesting, thanks very much.......

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