Weld was cultivated in France and also grew wild in Italy at one time. 

 The upper part of this herbaceous plant, especially the leaves and seeds, 

 were chopped for dyeing, along with the stem that contained less coloring 

 matter. Large amounts of weld were required, since its coloring matter 

 was not concentrated. Processing was generally similar to that of fustic 

 and quercitron bark. 



Although weld is best known for its bright yellow hues, various mordants 

 and different fibers combined to create hues ranging from yellow to yellow 

 olive. Wool and cotton will dye olive-yellow with chrome; copper mordant 

 dyes wool yellow-olive; alum, yellow; and a very bright yellow could be 

 achieved in silk using a titanium mordant. Most early 19th-century dyers' 

 mixed results were caused by their almost universal use of the alum mordant. 

 By 1 920 weld was no longer used in England and had not been in common 

 use in the United States for a number of years. 



YOUNG FUSTIC (Cotinus coggygria, also known as Rhus cotinus) 

 Also known as Venice sumach; fustel or fustet (Fr.) 



This dye, obtained from a small tree of the sumach family, is botanically 

 unrelated to fustic, the well-known tropical dyewood. Both impart yellow- 

 orange colors to textiles, but young fustic is so fugitive to light that its 

 usefulness has always been limited. The stems and trunk of the tree Cotinus 

 coggygria, native to the West Indian islands and southern Europe, were 

 cut and gathered into small bundles for export. Dyers rasped or cut and 

 boiled young fustic to extract its dye. Usually it was combined with other, 

 more permanent dyes to heighten their hues, leaving behind a fast color 

 when its temporary hue had vanished. 



Brown Dyes 



^BUTTERNUT or WHITE WALNUT {Juglans cinerea) and 

 *BLACK WALNUT (J. nigra) 



Butternut and black-walnut trees belong to the same botanical genus 

 and have common dyeing properties. Although certain color differences 

 may be noted, methods of extracting the dyes are similar, thus both varieties 

 are discussed together. 



Americans knew the art of extracting rich and durable browns from the 

 roots and nuts of native walnut trees as early as 1669, when Governor 

 Winthrop of Connecticut sent the following report with samples of butternut 

 dyeing to the Royal Society of London: 



Shreds of stuff made by the English planters of cotton and wool, put up to shew the 

 colour, which was only dyed with the bark of a kind of walnut-tree, called by the planters 

 the butter-nut-tree, the kernel of that sort of walnut being very oily, whence they are 

 called butter-nuts. They dyed it only with the decoction of that bark, without allum or 

 copperas, as they said (Birch, 1756, vol. 2, p. 418). 



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