Color in the rug | From this material | Notes |
red to orange | root of the madder plant | Rubia tinctoria |
salmon | depleted madder dye | as dye baths are re-used, the dye gets weaker and colors get lighter |
bright red to burgundy | cochineal (dried insect carapace) | often from Dactylopius coccus |
blue-red to purple-red | lac (resin secreted by insect) | often from Coccus laccae |
light blue to navy | indigo (extracted from the indigo plant) | Indigoferra |
pale yellow to yellow-brown | larkspur or isparuk (a flowering plant) | Delphinium sulpureum |
pale yellow to yellow-brown | weld (a flowering herb) | Reseda luteola |
brown | oak bark, tree galls | Quercus |
black | tannin, oak tree galls, iron | this dye is often damaging to wool |
green | double-dye of larkspur and indigo |
Common vegetable dyes
The most commonly used vegetable dyes are indigo (originally obtained by
extracting and fermenting indican from the leaves of the indigo plant), madder
(produced by boiling the dried, chunked root of the madder plant in the dye
pot), and larkspur (produced by boiling the crushed leaves, stems, and
flowers of the larkspur plant). These dyes produce, respectively, dark navy
blue, dark rusty-red, and muted gold. Long ago dyers realized that as more wool
was dyed in a single dyepot, colors became weaker and weaker. Dyers use this
notion of depleated dyes to their advantage. The first dyeing produces a deep,
strong color. Subsequent dyeings in the same dyepot produce lighter, softer
colors (like the three shades of indigo, madder, and yellow illustrated here):
Dyers also quickly learned to combine colors to produce different hues. There is, for instance, no "vegetable" dye material that yields green (an important color if you're interested in weaving a floral design!). First dyeing wool blue, then dyeing it again with yellow, does produce a green color. If you look closely at the green color in a vegetable-dyed rug, you will commonly see that the color is uneven, more blue-green in some areas, and more yellow-green in others. This is because of the double-dyeing technique:
So, by using the notion that depleted dyes produce different hues, and by combining some dyes through overdyeing wool, dyers can produce a surprisingly large pallette of colors from a very limited variety of materials. These people are clever!