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Natural dyes are common. The main three in medieval Europe were madder, weld, and woad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubia_tinctorum https://en.wikipedia.org/

by mrob 2y ago

Natural dyes are common. The main three in medieval Europe were madder, weld, and woad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubia_tinctorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubia_tinctorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reseda_luteola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reseda_luteola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isatis_tinctoria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isatis_tinctoria These give red, yellow, and blue respectively, which are the primary colors of the traditional RYB subtractive color model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RYB_color_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RYB_color_model However, RYB is a poor match for human vision. The better subtractive primaries are cyan, magenta, and yellow. Mixing red and blue produces a dull, desaturated purple even when you're starting with saturated primaries, and the three main natural dyes are not particularly saturated. Tyrian purple was esteemed because it produced a visibly better purple than mixing woad and madder, which makes a purplish brown. Likewise, crimson from Kermes insects produces a visibly better red than madder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermes_(dye) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermes_(dye) Poor people would still have colored clothing, because all clothing was expensive hand-made clothing back then, so the marginal cost of dying with the common plant dyes was relatively small. But rich people could afford expensive dyes, and afford multiple applications of the cheap dyes. In some cases there were also sumptuary laws restricting use of expensive dyes. Rich people's clothing would have looked far more garish by our standards.

yard2010 2y ago
Funny to think that in 2000 years someone makes the same statement only about a purple Porsche vs a purple Dacia
adrian_b 2y ago
Besides visual attractiveness when fresh, the value of the dyes also depended a lot on their lightfastness and water resistance. Many of the dyes used in antiquity degraded quickly, so the clothes had to be dyed again periodically. Tyrian purple was valued not only because it was hard to obtain, but also because the clothes dyed with it kept their color for a very long time. The next most resistant dye was the blue from indigo or woad, then the red from beetles. The other colors faded quickly.
philwelch 2y ago
> Poor people would still have colored clothing, because all clothing was expensive hand-made clothing back then, so the marginal cost of dying with the common plant dyes was relatively small. Bret Deveraux has a fascinating, in-depth series about this: https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-high-fiber/ https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-t... To summarize from what I can remember: it wasn’t even quite that clothing was “expensive”. You didn’t buy clothing unless you were absurdly rich. You didn’t even buy cloth. You bought raw fabric, usually wool or linen, and you had to spin it into yarn or thread and then weave it into cloth. Spinning was the vast majority of the actual work you’d do though. And by “you” I meant if you were a woman, because this was always considered women’s work. And highly respected as such, to the point where even wealthy high status women took pride in still doing it or at least claiming to, or at least other people claimed it of women they admired.

by mrob 2y ago

yard2010 2y ago

Funny to think that in 2000 years someone makes the same statement only about a purple Porsche vs a purple Dacia

adrian_b 2y ago

Besides visual attractiveness when fresh, the value of the dyes also depended a lot on their lightfastness and water resistance. Many of the dyes used in antiquity degraded quickly, so the clothes had to be dyed again periodically. Tyrian purple was valued not only because it was hard to obtain, but also because the clothes dyed with it kept their color for a very long time. The next most resistant dye was the blue from indigo or woad, then the red from beetles. The other colors faded quickly.

philwelch 2y ago

> Poor people would still have colored clothing, because all clothing was expensive hand-made clothing back then, so the marginal cost of dying with the common plant dyes was relatively small. Bret Deveraux has a fascinating, in-depth series about this: https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-high-fiber/ https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-t... To summarize from what I can remember: it wasn’t even quite that clothing was “expensive”. You didn’t buy clothing unless you were absurdly rich. You didn’t even buy cloth. You bought raw fabric, usually wool or linen, and you had to spin it into yarn or thread and then weave it into cloth. Spinning was the vast majority of the actual work you’d do though. And by “you” I meant if you were a woman, because this was always considered women’s work. And highly respected as such, to the point where even wealthy high status women took pride in still doing it or at least claiming to, or at least other people claimed it of women they admired.