Madder: The Ubiquitous Root of Red’s Entangled Histories

Fifteen thousand years ago, in the mountain ranges of the Levant, red-stained beads were being produced by a sedentary hunter-gatherer community.¹ The red color came from the roots of madder (Rubiaceae), a plant whose association with the color is now not known by many.

Red has been a notable color for humans across time and cultures. Believed to be the first color newborn babies can perceive, red’s primacy and connection to humanity stands out.² With associations ranging from power and status to beauty and affection, its symbolism has been and continues to be multifaceted. While prehistoric societies going back 100,000 years used mineral pigments such as red ochre in ritual and decoration, the madder-stained beads found in the Levant are the earliest example of the human use of organic (plant) pigment to produce vibrant shades of red.

Until 1869 with the invention of synthetic alizarin, madder reigned as the primary source of red dye across the world. The labor of cultivation, the knowledge of mordanting, and the expertise of extraction underscored an intimate relationship between humans and the plant. It has been used in countless ways, from pigment used in mummy portraiture in Ancient Egypt to the trousers of nineteenth-century French soldiers.³ Its cultivation and circulation resulted in entangled histories of labor, trade, and culture. As a plant, it holds little symbolism in its own right - yet its roots hold within them the very essence of red that shaped human culture for millennia.

The eclipse of madder by synthetic alizarin represents more than a shift in chemistry–it marks a fundamental reorganization of how the color red is produced and used. Yet today, madder persists at the margins, in cultures of natural dying, through art and artifact, and as a weedy plant in dyers’ gardens. What follows is an account of some of the collaborations between humans and madder—a story of how a plant rose to define a color for 15,000 years, then fell into near-oblivion within a single generation.

Madder’s Botanical Strengths

Dyer’s madder (Rubia tinctorum L.) belongs to the Rubiaceae family, an expansive botanical group of more than 600 genera and more than 13,000 species that includes economically significant plants such as Coffea (coffee) and Chinchona (quinine).⁴ Within this vast family, the Rubia genus stands out not only for its biological characteristics but for the way these characteristics enabled madder to become one of the most widely cultivated dye plants in history.

Anatomically, the plant is defined by the structures that synthesize and store alizarin, the red pigment that fueled its global importance as a dye.⁵ The species is characterized by their long cylindrical roots consisting of a “dark, easily separable cortex, whose epidermis is thin, and of a ligneous meditullium, which, in the fresh state, is yellow, but becomes reddish by drying.”⁶ This distinctive root-and-leaf architecture, with deep pigment reservoirs below and hardy vegetative structures above, made madder both valuable for dye extraction and durable enough to be moved, planted, and re-planted across regions.⁷

Felter, Harvey and John LLoyd. “Rubia-Madder.” In King's American Dispensatory, 1679–1680. N.p. (Cincinnati: Ohio Valley Co., 1854).

Ecologically, madder’s success lies in its adaptability. Although often associated with the warm Mediterranean, the plant survives in a remarkable range of climates by retreating underground during adverse conditions.⁸ It grows wild in shrublands, near fields and settlements, in open spaces, and gardens; habitats that facilitated both opportunistic gathering and deliberate cultivation. In temperate climates, madder has poor nutrient acquisition and thus will not produce many seeds. In nutrient-poor temperate soils, it rarely produces viable seeds and so spreads easily through vegetative propagation, allowing growers to reproduce plants reliably from root cuttings. Under richer conditions, it flowers and fruits readily, replenishing itself through seeds enclosed in red berries. Once planted, madder is typically left in place for two or three years, so its roots can accumulate pigment.⁹

These traits made madder exceptionally portable and scalable as an economic crop. Native to the Mediterranean basin, southeastern Europe, Asia Minor, and parts of Iran and the Caucasus, wild madder (Rubia peregrina L.) was once harvested from forests and creek beds rich in clay, humus, and moisture.¹⁰ Early dyers harvested the wild plants, but as demand for specific dye shades increased, growers began selecting for stronger and more reliable pigment production.¹¹ This led to the emergence of Rubia tinctorum, the cultivated “dyer’s madder,” whose root coloration varies with soil pH and mineral content but, under suitable conditions, yields a deep and stable red.¹² In Asia, Rubia cordifolia filled a similar role, but produced a rustier hue due to its distinct pigment chemistry (dominated by the chemical munjistin rather than alizarin) and has been used exclusively for centuries in Asian textile traditions.^{13 14} Due to the madder’s robust morphology and ecological tolerance, people cultivated madder across continents, securing its place as a botanical cornerstone in global dye history.

What’s in a Name? Madder Matters

As madder spread across regions and became embedded in global dye economies, the task of determining which plants counted as “madder” became increasingly consequential. Identification was not merely a botanical exercise: it was a process of knowledge production that shaped trade, cultivation, and the flow of economic value. Thus, the history of madder’s classification reflects an ongoing negotiation between local expertise, imperial scientific systems, and the economic stakes attached to a plant that could be grown, sold, and taxed across continents.

Before the rise of Linnaean taxonomy, authority over plant knowledge largely rested with practitioners who worked directly with madder as a dye or, sometimes as a medicine. In classical antiquity, Dioscorides, the Greek physician, pharmacologist, and botanist, separated wild from cultivated forms in Materia Medica based on their dyeing and therapeutic effects; an approach grounded in sensory experience rather than abstract taxonomy.¹⁵ That early herbal manuals often offered vague or contradictory descriptions spurred the creation of illustrated herbals to establish consistency in recognition across regions. These images became early tools of standardization, enabling the circulation of plant knowledge to support expanding trade networks long before scientific botany was formalized.

However, because madder’s economic value was tied to pigment rather than taxonomy, vernacular naming remained fluid. “Madder” could refer to Rubia tinctorum, Rubia peregrina, Rubia cordifolia, or even pigment-bearing species in related genera such as Galium and Asperula.¹⁶ From a dyer’s perspective, “madder” simply meant any plant capable of yielding red dye, regardless of its botanical classification. Historian and ethnologist Robert Chenciner notes, “There is a difference between the botanist’s and the dyer’s meanings of the word ‘madder.’ The botanical term refers to members of the Rubiaceae natural family, most of which grow wild. Dyers generally use cultivated madder and by far the most commonly used madder is Rubia tinctorum.”¹⁷ These ambiguities mattered: they shaped trade classifications, influenced which plants were cultivated at scale, and complicated attempts to standardize madder as a commodity across imperial markets.

Linnaeus’s eighteenth-century system sought to resolve such inconsistencies by imposing a universal nomenclature, but it also aligned botanical authority with imperial economic priorities. By placing madder in the genus Rubia and naming the cultivated species Rubia tinctorum, literally “dyer’s madder”, Linnaeus codified economic utility directly into scientific identity.¹⁸ His reliance on floral morphology rather than ecological or practical traits aimed to create reproducible classifications that could circulate reliably throughout Europe’s scientific and colonial institutions. Yet the system’s limitations reveal its Eurocentric framing. The wild species Rubia peregrina was labeled the “traveler,” despite its cultivation in the species’ native range and trade history, while Rubia cordifolia, long prized across India, China, and Mongolia for its munjistin-rich roots, remained taxonomically entangled with its wild relatives.¹⁹ Rubia cordifolia‘s name, “heart-leaved,” reflected pre-Linnaean morphological habits more than the sophisticated local distinctions embedded in Asian dye traditions. Thus, madder’s history demonstrates that plant identification functioned not only as a scientific endeavor but as a mechanism through which economic priorities, colonial power, and local expertise intersected. The very act of naming madder helped determine whose knowledge counted and how plants could move across empires.

Taking Root: Madder’s Agricultural Expansion

As European powers increasingly treated the plant not merely as a botanical specimen but as an agricultural commodity whose value lay in its capacity to generate a dependable red dye, economic ambition, agronomic experimentation, and imperial competition converged. The need to identify madder shifted to determining how to cultivate it efficiently enough to secure control over the lucrative dye markets that linked Europe, Asia, and the Atlantic.

In colonial North America, dyer’s madder entered the landscape through domestic economies, yet even the small kitchen gardens participated in the broader imperial efforts for resource extraction. Settlers planted madder among mint, chamomile, woad, and vegetables in plots designed to ensure household self-sufficiency and reduce dependence on imported dyes.²⁰ These gardens were ostensibly intimate and practical, but they also served as tools of territorial transformation: cultivating madder helped settlers impose familiar agricultural order onto unfamiliar soils, domesticating both plant and landscape. What looked like a household garden was, as scholars have noted, a “naturalized myth”, a space that concealed its political function in anchoring colonial presence.²¹

European cultivation, however, moved far beyond household plots. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, regions such as the Netherlands transformed madder into a plantation-style cash crop, its profitability driven by large-scale exportation. Dutch farmers, especially in areas like Schouwen, an island in southwestern Netherlands, developed intensive agricultural systems tailored to maximize root yield and pigment concentration. Multiple plowings, carefully timed field rotations, strategic spacing, and the interplanting of cabbage or beans to maintain soil fertility became hallmarks of Dutch madder agriculture. The labor system was correspondingly stratified: men handled deep plowing, women and children managed weeding and thinning, and seasonal workers moved in and out according to agricultural cycles. This highly orchestrated system produced such a reliable and abundant supply that the Dutch came close to monopolizing the European madder trade.

The economic implications of this dominance were clear to Britain, which tried to break Dutch control by cultivating its own domestic supply. British horticulturalist Philip Miller argued that reliance on foreign producers threatened national economic interests, insisting that madder was “of the greatest consequence” to textile and linen industries and must be produced locally to ensure a cheap and constant supply.²² British botanists, agronomists, and estate owners therefore attempted to adapt Dutch methods to local soils. John Arbuthnot refined the techniques further, emphasizing exceptionally deep tilling up to eighteen inches to increase root development and pigment density.²³ Through such experiments, the knowledge of how to grow madder circulated across borders, transformed by local environmental constraints yet always driven by the strategic desire to secure economic advantage.

Beyond Europe, similar dynamics played out in Asia, where Rubia cordifolia formed the backbone of commercial red-dye production. Although chay root (Oldenlandia umbellata) and other species supplemented regional dye economies, madder was the most important vegetal source for producing durable reds for export textiles.²⁴ Farmers prepared fields with manure, spaced plants at roughly 60 × 75 cm., allowing for more than 22,000 plants per hectare, and relied on rainfall patterns rather than intensive irrigation. While these systems lacked the rigid regimentation of Dutch plantations, they were nonetheless embedded in a highly sophisticated economic landscape in which dye production fed into regional and international trade networks. Each cultivation system, whether domestic, imperial, or indigenous, translated the plant’s biology into economic value. In this sense, the spread of madder was not simply a story of horticultural adaptation but of the economic infrastructures and power relations that established dye-plant agriculture across the early modern world.

The Power of Red

What is it about the color red? Its status as a color both beloved and admired emerges across cultures and continents, and humans have consequently sought it for centuries. While other sources of red have been used for millennia—for instance, insect-based dyes such as kermes and cochineal, extraction was usually more expensive and laborious. Growing natively around the world and with its various species, the availability of madder made it a more versatile option.

For the Romans, who were particularly fond of red, the color represented authority and status, and was often worn for special occasions. For the highest-ranking officials, the dye of choice was kermes, which produced the brightest shades of red. However, the expense of kermes meant that lower-ranking officials often turned to cheaper means of achieving the exclusive red color, such as madder. Dying textiles with madder consequently became an industry of the Roman Empire, with surviving texts providing detailed descriptions of soil conditions and plant growth to produce the best results. The madder industry across ancient Rome was so abundant that the collegium tinctorum dyer’s guild had a sect known as the sandicinii who worked exclusively to produce madder-based reds.

It was not only the Romans who prized madder for its creation of red for both cultural and economic reasons. In nineteenth-century France, the trousers of French soldiers were dyed a vibrant red to support France’s madder industry. While once designed for economic reasons, the red trousers became synonymous with Frenchness for soldiers and sentimental to their self-image. Indeed, the pantalon de Garance—garance is French for madder—were still worn at the start of World War I despite their bright color attracting enemy attention amid other camouflaged uniforms. Ironically, by this point, the pantalon de Garance were no longer even dyed with madder, but rather with synthetic alizarin.²⁵

Madder’s Entanglements

From cloth to beads, madder is notable for the degree to which its use and production are entangled with other beings both human and non-human. Textiles made from animal or vegetal fibers entwine madder not only with such nonhuman actors, but with complex histories of human labor needed for both the laborious dyeing process and the production of textiles more widely. Madder’s use in dying cotton is linked to the enslaved laborers on cotton plantations in the Americas, for example, with plantation-grown cotton imported into Europe and subsequently dyed using madder.²⁶

Other dye sources, both plant and animal, are also entangled with histories of madder, as dyes were often combined to produce desired results. In Europe, vegetal dyes for cloth, such as woad, weld, and indigo, were often mixed with madder to produce various shades. In his poem The Former Age, Geoffrey Chaucer constructs an ecology alienated from the conveniences of “modern” fourteenth-century life, such as the plough. He also notes that such an ecology had forgotten the ancient arts of dyeing: “No mader, welde, or wood.”²⁷ Knowledge of dyeing is a common theme in literature and art, with writers often aspiring to the techniques of the ancients described by Roman writers such as Pliny the Elder.

Animal dyes were commonly mixed with madder to produce paint pigment, in which cochineal extracted from the female scale insect was combined with crushed madder root to produce the desired carmine pigment. Carmin de garance was the most expensive in the eighteenth-century French colormen’s catalogue, due to the rarity and difficulty of producing the bright carmine color.²⁸ Madder-lake pigment, or rose-lake as it was sometimes known, was also a common pigment used in European art from the fifteenth century onward. A key advantage of madder-lake pigment was that madder’s domestic European growth meant that it could be produced by artists at home by crushing harvested roots and binding them with a metallic salt and oil.

There is perhaps an irony that madder plant is rarely the subject of art, but often the medium. The plant is little depicted, yet it is likely often there in front of our eyes, as the rouge of a lip, or the blush of a petal.

The Colonial Rise of Madder

The allure of red and its endless uses sparked an important chapter in the history of madder: its colonial entanglements. The sixteenth century saw European audiences begin to covet red cloth imported from Asia and the Middle East first via the Silk Road and later by shipping routes. Objects and cloth dyed with madder, from Persian carpets to dresses from India, signified European society’s fetishization of the Orient. Orientalism was rife among European courts, who gained status in colonial society with their consumption of luxury goods such as tea, their collections of so-considered ”exotic” objects, and their wearing of colonial fashions.²⁹ European yearning for red, for the social status that wearing luxe red cloth or displaying plush red carpets afforded them, meant that madder was often at the center of emerging colonial systems of consumption without Europe.

Yet, why did Europeans import madder and madder-dyed cloth when it grew natively in Europe? While Rubia peregrina (wild madder) and Rubia tinctorum were found in Europe, Rubia cordifolia (Indian madder) growing in South Asia was considered more attractive for its brighter, dye-fast ability.³⁰ Previously to achieve such bright colors, European dyers had resorted to mixing madder with expensive insect dyes such as kermes or imported cochineal from the Americas. Yet, this was largely only used to dye animal-based fibers such as wool, to which insect-based dyes such as cochineal bind better. Rubia cordifolia, with its bright, color-fast ability, thus rose in popularity with the import of vegetal fibres such as cotton.

Exemplifying this, the cotton textiles calico and chintz, produced in India became a craze in sixteenth-century European society. Calico is a coarse cotton, unbleached and largely unprocessed. Chintz is a refined cotton, typically dyed in a floral pattern. Chintz was imported pre-dyed into Europe, while cheaper calico was imported for domestic dying production. While madder-dyed textiles had been both produced in Europe and imported north from the Mediterranean and the Levant prior to the sixteenth century, European colonization of South Asia created increased trade and demand for calico textiles, often dyed with Rubia cordifolia.

The allure of these imported textiles lay not only in their vivid madder reds, but in the intricate artistry of their production. Chintz fabrics encompass both painted and block-printed textiles, and the word chintz is derived from the Hindi word chīnt, meaning spray or sprinkle, referring to the colorful patterns of the handcrafted textiles.³¹ Chintz patterns were generally floral, referencing both arboreal and herbaceous flowering plants, and sometimes including animals and scenes of human pleasure activities.³² The processes of weaving, bleaching, and preparing the fabric, painting with mordants, dyeing, and drying took weeks, if not months, to accomplish, leading a Dutch East India Company official, Daniel Havart to remark that “This painting of Chintz goes on very slowly like snails which creeps on and appear not to advance.”³³

Chintz became highly fashionable in European societies, not only because cotton was cheaper than silk, but because it signified social status for Europeans benefiting from new colonial systems. Calico, on the other hand, was imported by European East India Companies, who realized they could profit from selling cheaper calico to dyeing factories in Europe.³⁴ ‘Calico’ was named after Indian city of Calicut, now Kozhikode, from whose port the British colonists exported the fabric. The scale of these imports into Europe was so vast that it threatened domestic textile markets for European fabrics such as linen and hemp, in addition to creating a nongovernmental, unregulated economy of profit. By 1686, textile workers in France had successfully petitioned the government to ban imported Indian calicos, seeking to protect domestic markets. Similar protectionist laws were enacted in Prussia and Great Britain to curb its use, with the Calico Acts in early eighteenth century Britain shifting focus away from understandings of the British colonies as suppliers of raw materials for English manufacturing.³⁵ However, these laws were largely impossible to enforce. The ban on calicos only made Indian calico and chintz rarer, and consequently more desirable to the upper classes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.³⁶

While the ban on calico was popular among domestic textile producers, it did not last. Economic interests won as the import of cotton became notably cheaper and more profitable for European colonial governments than domestic production of textiles; the bans on calico imports were reversed across Europe by the end of the eighteenth century. The calico craze and the import of Indian madder marked a new era in madder’s history and the availability of red cloth to signify ties to the colonial empire. Where domestic European use of madder was once so prized that laws were passed against deceiving customers and supplanting pure madder with other sources, it now marked a stark contrast to the abundance of madder both imported and domestic making it the cheaper additive to animal-based dyes such as cochineal or kermes. That said, with the establishment of colonial trading routes and the availability of attractive calicos, European dyers had to keep up with the demands of customers for the bright reds produced using Indian madder.

In Pursuit of Turkey Red

Of all the shades of red made from madder dye, none comes close to the widespread popularity and appreciation of Turkey Red, also called rouge d’Andrinople, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century. This vibrant, colorfast red involved weeks-long processes that transformed Rubia cordifolia, into one of the most coveted textile colors. The pursuit of Turkey Red drove technological innovation, international knowledge exchange, and economic competition for centuries with European manufacturers seeking to replicate Indian and Middle Eastern methods.

Though Turkey red originated with Indian dyers, it derived its name from the trade routes through which it reached Europe.³⁷ Indian dyers, particularly those working in Gujarat, India, developed some of the most sophisticated and labor-intensive processes for achieving the coveted Turkey Red using madder. Indian artisans perfected mordanting techniques that produced the brightest and most durable reds, establishing a standard that would influence dyeing practices across continents.

Mordanting—a necessary step for dyeing many vegetal fibers—is the process of treating textile fibers with metallic salts or other chemical agents to create a chemical bond between the fiber and dye, ensuring the color adheres permanently and resists fading during washing or exposure to light. Historically, mordanting expanded the possibilities of natural dyes, permitting steadfast dyes from a greater number of dye sources such as plants, insect, and mineral dyes, and also allowing a single dye source to produce multiple colors. In the case of madder, different mordanting techniques produce bright reds, soft oranges, and deep purples.

The complex Gujarati process began with treating textiles with oil, followed by applications of tannins extracted from the nut of the myrobalan tree (Terminalia chebula). The fabric was then treated with alum before the final dyeing step using Rubia cordifolia. The Rubia cordifolia roots were dried and pulverized to a fine powder before using in a dyebath, to extract the maximum amount of munjistin and alizarin, two chemical compounds that produced the reddish-orange dye. This process required repeating steps many times and had numerous variations: some dyers substituted buffalo milk for oil, others added an initial step of treating fabric with goat or sheep dung. The finishing process was equally elaborate, involving washing the dyed fabric with dung and soap before exposing it to the sun for final color development.³⁸

The alum used in the Gujarati process provided essential calcium and was derived from local plant sources, extracted from the ashes of bark or other plant material containing aluminum compounds. This contrasted sharply with European practices, which largely adopted Middle Eastern techniques using mineral-based alums. Much of our knowledge about the Indian methods comes from accounts by European traders and craftsmen who traveled back to India to understand how local dyers achieved Turkey Red, after its recipes reached Western Europe.

The extraordinary profits from imported Indian textiles created intense pressure for European manufacturers to develop local production capabilities, ultimately catalyzing industrial textile manufacturing. The Turkey Red process remained a closely guarded secret from Western European dyers until Armenian dyers migrating to France in the early eighteenth century shared crucial knowledge with French textile mills in Marseilles.³⁹ French manufacturers soon discovered the process’s laborious complexity. While largely adapting the Indian processes of deep-cleaning, treating, dyeing, and mordanting, French processes also involved combining madder with sheep blood or ox blood in the dyebath. Initially following Indian and Middle Eastern methods, French dyers gradually experimented with simplifications, eventually eliminating steps like blood additives without affecting the final product.⁴⁰

In the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century, various French chemists published their trials in achieving Turkey Red. In 1798, Le Pileur d’Apligny published “L’art de la teinture des fils et étoffes de coton,” describing the transmission of knowledge surrounding Turkey Red as filled with secrecy and obscured steps.⁴¹ In his description of the process to achieve Turkey Red, d’Apligny describes conducting several tests to determine the chemical composition of river water, revealing a continuity with understanding water as a critical ingredient, like the Indian dyers understood.⁴² According to d’Apligny, much experimentation to achieve Turkey Red involved manipulating the steps of bleaching and mordanting, but he offers little about adjusting the variables of producing the dyebath with madder itself.

These ongoing dyeing experiments led to the pursuit of synthetic alternatives, culminating in the discovery of synthetic alizarin in 1868 by German chemists Carl Graebe and Carl Liebermann. Working independently on the same process, English chemist William Henry Perkin also successfully synthesized alizarin. Graebe and Libermann beat Perkin to patenting, and patented their discovery in 1869, claiming that using their process, “we receive the alizarine in a form in which it can be employed in the same manner as the different preparations from madder.”⁴³

This breakthrough fundamentally transformed the global textile industry. With synthetic alizarin production becoming commercially viable, the centuries-old madder market collapsed, devastating traditional cultivation regions from Turkey to France. The synthetic alternative eliminated the need for the laborious, weeks-long processes that had defined Turkey Red production for centuries. What had once required skilled artisans, specific water sources, and months of careful processing could now be achieved in industrial facilities with standardized chemical procedures, marking the end of madder’s dominance in red textile production. Ultimately, colonial longing for red, for its profitability and status, led to madder’s synthetic replacement—leaving in its wake a plant now largely unknown.

Despite synthetic alizarin’s industrial dominance, madder’s afterlife persists in contemporary cultures of experimentation. Small-scale dyers and textile artists work with the plant’s inherent variability, exploiting the numerous variables in traditional dyeing processes to create unique hues and intensities. This renewed interest in natural dyes goes beyond mere revival; practitioners actively recover and reinterpret historical methods while documenting their experiments through digital networks, knowledge-sharing workshops, and selling handcrafted items. These modern communities are creating new forms of collaborative knowledge-sharing that once defined traditional textile workshops, ensuring the plant’s experimental culture continues evolving. Yet this continuation in small communities highlights how dramatically madder’s role has changed—from a widely used material to one maintained by dedicated practitioners.

Madder’s afterlife reveals how materials transform across time and technology. For fifteen thousand years, madder was central to producing red: from prehistoric beads to large-scale dye works, from manuscripts to military uniforms, the plant’s roots were used across cultures and continents. What began with an unassuming plant with yellow flowers and red roots required laborious processes built on embodied knowledge, where a single textile demanded weeks of attention from multiple artisans. Today, madder exists in multiple forms: as living plants in dye gardens like that at Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Upperville, Virginia, as processed red powder by specialty suppliers, and through its synthetic descendants in industrial production. Red persists as an important color to humankind, and madder’s story illustrates how materials can maintain their relevance even when their original economic and technological contexts have disappeared. While it was used to stain beads in the Levant, to dye the trousers of French soldiers, and to capture shades of red on canvas, madder’s varied afterlife demonstrates how human creativity persists and adapts plants to modern uses. The history of madder invites us to consider what other collaborations between humans and plants might be similarly displaced, and what forms of knowledge and practice we might lose when these relationships change.

Recipe: Dyeing with Madder at Home

From The Art and Science of Natural Dyes: Principles, Experiments, and Results, by Joy Boutrup and Catharine Ellis

Extraction: Grind the dry madder roots as finely as possible. If using whole or chopped madder roots, soak the roots overnight. After soaking, the roots can be more finely ground by using a blender. Cook ground Rubia tinctorium at a moderate temperature (maximum temperature 65 C/150 F) for at least 2 hours to completely extract the dye. Strain the liquid. Multiple extractions will likely release more dye from the roots. To extract munjistin from Rubia cordifolia, add vinegar or citric acid to obtain a pH 4, and boil for 1 hour. After extraction, neutralize the dye solution with a small amount of soda ash before dyeing.

Dyeing: Add the textile to the bath and very slowly bring the temperature of the dye bath to 65 C/150 F. Maintain that temperature for 1 hour. Rubia tinctorium produces the clearest reds by using an aluminum mordant, and violets by using an iron mordant in hard water that contains calcium. If using soft water, add a small amount of calcium carbonate to the dye bath (approximately 1 gram per liter [g/L] of dye bath).

Caution: Overheating Rubia tinctorium changes some of the dyes and releases anthragallol, resulting in browner tones.⁴⁴

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40. Brunello, Franco. The Art of Dyeing in the History of Mankind (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1973), 231. ↩︎

41. Le Pileur d’Apligny, L’art de la teinture des fils et étoffes de coton : précédé d’une théorie nouvelle des véritables causes de la fixité des couleurs de bon teint : suivi des cultures du pastel, de la gaude, de la garance, et de leur préparation, à l’usage des cultivateus et des manufactures (Paris: Chez Servière, libraire, 1798), 152. [http://archive.org/details/lartdelateinture00lepi]. ↩︎

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