Crimson vat

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Real purple raw material obtained from the purple snail Hexaplex trunculus .

The Purpurküpe the dye bath to materials with real purple dye manufacture. In ancient times , wool and silk were the main materials used for purple fabrics . Purple snails such as Hexaplex trunculus , Bolinus brandaris , Stramonita haemastoma , were the starting point for the coloring substance. The biological material of the snails is fermented in the fermentation vat and the coloring substance, the purple, is produced on the textile material in a vat process.

history

Traces of purple factories can be found throughout the Mediterranean , indicating a lively activity in antiquity and the early Middle Ages . Since the fall of Byzantium in 1453, purple dyeing has not been heard on a large scale. No recipes are available, but Pliny the Elder describes his observation of the production of purple in the 1st century in the Naturalis historia :

“You then take out the vein [here the hypobranchial gland ] that we were talking about, add the necessary salt, about one sextarius per 100 pounds; they are soaked for three days as a rule, because the fresher it is, the greater the strength [of the preparation]. They are then heated in a vessel made of lead, add 500 pounds of dye to 100 amphorae of water, and heat them with constant, moderately warm steam, and therefore in the tube of a long oven. When the pieces of meat that have inevitably got stuck on the veins have been repeatedly skimmed off in this way and everything in the kettle has cleared up after about ten days, you can test cleaned wool and boil the juice until the desired effect is achieved is. "

- Pliny the Elder

execution

From a chemical point of view, the aim is to reduce the insoluble purple so that the dye can be permanently absorbed onto the fiber. This reduction is triggered by the onset of fermentation after about three days. The organic components that inevitably stick to the glands seem to be responsible for this. According to the latest attempts, the vat must not come to a boil. A constant temperature and the right alkaline environment are likely to encourage a bacterium to multiply , which triggers the reduction. It alone makes it possible that the dye during the immersion of the wool or silk rearing and then in the air to one of the many variants of purple violet-red to blue-violet oxidized .

  • From the vat to the finished fabric sample

  • Fresh purple vat with Hexaplex trunculus

  • Reduced purple vat ready for dyeing

  • Dyed silk in purple vat

  • Dyed wool in purple vat

literature

  • KC Bailey: The Elder Pliny's Chapters on Chemical Subjects. Part I, Edward Arnold & Co, London 1929, pp. 28-29, In: The Classical Review. 44 (05): 204, November 2009, doi : 10.1017 / S0009840X00051465 .
  • I. Boesken-Kanold: The Purple Fermentation Vat: Dyeing or Painting with Murex trunculus. In: Jo Kirby: Dyes in History and Archeology. 20, Archetype, London 2005, ISBN 978-1-873132-29-6 , pp. 150-154.
  • J. Edmonds (Ed.): The Mystery of Imperial Purple Dye. (Historic Dye series no.7; 41 ff) 89 Chessfield Park, Little Chalfont Buckinghamshire 2000, ISBN 978-0-95341-336-2 .
  • J. Doumet: Etudes sur la couleur pourpre ancienne et tentative de reproduction du procédé de teinture de la ville de Tyr décrit par Pline l'Ancien. 2eme éd., Imprimerie Catholique , Beirut 1980, OCLC 8664777 , pp. 1-28.
  • Gaius Pliny Secundus d. Ä. : Natural history Latin-German. Book IX.xxxviii.133. Heimeran Verlag, Roderich König / Gerhard Winkler, 1979, ISBN 978-3-7765-2141-2 .
  • R. Haubrichs: L'étude de la pourpre: Histoire d'une couleur, chimie et expérimentations. In: MA Borello (ed.): Conchiglie e Archeologia, contributi scientifici in occasione della mostra "Dentro la conchiglia", Sezione archeologica. Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali, Trento 2004. In: Preistoria Alpina. 20, Supplemento 1, pp. 133-160 online (PDF; 14.3 MB), at vliz.be, accessed on February 24, 2017.
  • PE McGovern, RH Michel: Royal Purple Dye. The Chemical Reconstruction of the Ancient Mediterranean Industry. In: Acc.Chem.Res. 23, 1990, pp. 152-158, doi : 10.1021 / ar00173a006 .
  • AN Padden et al: An indigo-reducing thermophile from a woad vat, Clostridium isatidis sp.nov. In: International Journal of Systematic Bacteriology. 49, 1999, pp. 1025-1031, doi : 10.1099 / 00207713-49-3-1025 .
  • G. Steigerwald: The ancient purple dyeing according to the report of Pliny the Elder in his "Naturalis Historia". In: Traditio. 42 (1), pp. 1-57, JSTOR 27831180 .