In the mid-1 8th century Peter Kahn observed that women in Pennsylvania 

 and New Jersey used black-walnut bark and nut husks to dye wool a 

 lasting brown. Thomas Cooper, in 1815, stated that usually the green 

 hulls or rinds of the walnut were used for dyeing browns. The roots' inner 

 bark — sometimes referred to as walnut bark — was also used, even though 

 it was less potent than the rind. Since no mordants were needed for walnut 

 and butternut dyeing, the vegetable material could be boiled for a certain 

 period and the wetted cloth dipped until the desired color had been 

 achieved. 



Besides producing browns, walnut dye was often used to ground fabric 

 in preparation for black dyeing, or for black dyeing as explained in an 

 anonymously written 1811 dye manual: 



Black is sometimes dyed without having given it a blue ground, but this ought to be 

 only for stuffs of inferior quality . . . butternut bark put in an iron kettle, if (allowed) 

 to remain long enough will dissolve enough of the iron to make a tolerable black, as the 

 experience of many women has demonstrated, in coloring stockings (p. 39). 



*CATECHU; also known as cutch; cachou (Fr.); das Katechu (Ger.) 



from Acacia catechu, sometimes called Bengal catechu 



from Areca catechu, sometimes called Bombay catechu 

 GAMBIER ( Uncaria gambir) ; also known as gambler catechu and gambia 



Catechu, the last important vegetable coloring agent added to the 

 professional dyer's repertoire, was used in Indian calico printing long 

 before its advantages were idealized in Europe and America. This brown 

 dye was first applied to European printed cottons around 1800 in Augs- 

 burg, Germany (Persoz, 1846, vol. 3, pp. 98-99). One American scientist 

 who compared the properties of catechu and chestnut bark in 1819 men- 

 tioned that catechu was discovered "12 or 15 years" earlier (Sheldon, 

 1819, p. 148). It is difficult to ascertain how widely it was used in America 

 during this early period. Thomas Cooper mentioned its use as a substitute 

 for galls in 1814. The process apparently was little used in France until 

 1829, however, when M. Barbet of Jouy exploited this secret process to 

 great commercial advantage for three years. During the 1830s catechu 

 came into general use in Great Britain and America, where rapid strides 

 were made in improving methods of application. 



The name "'terra japonica" was sometimes applied mistakenly to this 

 brown dye because it was believed to be an earth found in Japan. Actually 

 three different Mideastern plants produced this excellent dyestuff. Bengal 

 catechu was an extract from the heartwood and pods of Acacia catechu, a 

 leguminous East Indian tree. Bombay catechu was produced mainly by 

 areca or betel nuts, the fruits of the tropical Asian betel-nut palm, Areca 

 catechu. Gambler was an extract made from the leaves and twigs of a vine 

 that grew in India and the Malacca Islands, Uncaria gambir. 



40 



