Marvin Amstey

I recently had the privilege of handling a new slit weave kilim woven locally by David Cress, a professor in the art dept. of SUNY-Geneseo College. He made all of the dyes himself from natural madder and indigo. Upon first seeing this weaving I was impressed by the art and was sure many of the red and orange colors were synthetic. After talking to the weaver, it was obvious that my ability to discern natural from synthetic dyes is woefully inadequate and probably impossible. I post the images here to illustrate this point:




Any comments are appreciated.

James Blanchard

Thanks, Marvin. Very interesting.

But now I'm annoyed because of all of those Baluch rugs that I've passed on because of exactly that strong orange.

Could it be that they were actually natural dyes?

And those reds would almost certainly have made me nervous.

James

Rich Larkin

Hi Marvin,

That thing makes me realize that my diagnosis of dyes in rugs by eye as synthetic or natural is not so much a matter of being able to distinguish the one from the other, but rather my expectation of what is there. I've seen other examples of naturally madder-dyed wool that provide strong shades of red and orange like those your friend got, so it isn't that I think it can't be done. As James suggests, we just think it hasn't been done when we find rugs looking like that. The synthetic orange in Philip's puzzling inscribed rug turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy! That rug is prophetic at many levels, apparently.

The hero of the piece, as usual, is Pierre, as this weaving proves his mantra that you can't really tell by naked eye. What's slightly unsettling is how much better Professor Cress's kilim looks now that I know about the dyes.

Did he provide any information about how the different shades of red or orange were obtained?

I'm still not going to start scooping up the orange ones, though. How about you?

Rich

Marvin Amstey

I don't think this lesson will change my behavior either except to look more closely about how a particular suspect dye is used. If it is artistic and in keeping with the color and design of a particular area of a rug, I'll probably stop and look from a larger perspective than just at the one color.
As far as how David made the dyes, I'll ask him to fill in if he wishes, otherwise I can tell you that the temperature of the water bathes, the length of time in the bath, the concentration of the dye stuff all make a difference. Personally I'm not fond of the blue color in the kilim, but it, too, is natural (or bottled) indigo. In talking to the weavers in the Rochester Weavers Guild, how these dyes are used in "home" production is an art - not a science; all about experience. Makes me appreciate the weavers and dyers skills a whole lot more.

Rich Larkin

Hi Marvin,

It would never occur to me not to like that blue.

If you do speak to the professor again, I'd be interested to know where the wool came from, and the extent to which it was processed.

Rich

James Blanchard

I subscribe to this approach, Marvin. If I am not looking at a piece strictly from the perspective of age, then aesthetics and interest are the principal determinants for my assessment. If the colours work, then I am okay with it.

James

Paul Smith

Marvin, James, Rich,

I love this exercise. Clearly just about any shade can be reached with vegetal sources...but, fortunately (?) we have another analytical tool to bring to the evaluation of antique colors. That with a given group in a particular period, there are certain colors that are problematic. So, if you see that color in some piece that looks like it's, say, c. 1900, then you know that color is dangerous (or not), based on other pieces of similar color, age, and attribution. I rarely try to evaluate a color out of context, as this exercise forces us to do. Fortunately, with most of the Turkmen and Baluchis I seem to obsess over, there really are certain colors we fear for good reason, and I think that it is in fact rare that we encounter good colors that look evil in antique pieces.

So, weavers could have produced all these colors with vegetal sources, but they didn't. The other thing I can't help but wonder about is whether this modern artist had any problems with his vegetal colors bleeding. If it turns out that any of those reds were slippery, then I'd have to start re-evaluating my thoughts on c. 1900 reds.

Paul

Marvin Amstey

Rich - as far as processing the wool: it was purchased as un-dyed, machine spun wool. No other processing after weaving. It is a soft lambswool. Would have made a nice sweater.

Paul - I will try and ask him on Monday about the "slipperiness" of the colors. That interests me also.

Martin Andersen

Hi All

Interesting how difficult it is to distinguish, I certainly would have thought almost all the orange colours here synthetic. I suppose any visual judgement will be a matter of context.

The other way around, synthetic colours looking like natural colours, is of course also a problem. Here is a funny example of an old repair. From the back (and I probably also from the front at the time of the repair) the colours look kind of okay to me:



But from the front all the red has gone almost white, even the blue is faded. Only the natural brown seems to have survived whatever hit the synthetic colours on the repair of this torba:



Serious tip-fading:



best Martin

Rich Larkin

Hi Martin,

That's a tough one. I have the impression over the years of having seen more examples of total blitz fading on repair patches than on entire rugs. Do you have that sense? It may be a function of the economics of repair in the period when such pieces were patched. Perhaps people wouldn't pay much for the repair of (what were perceived as) modest pieces, and the repair persons had to keep overhead expense to a minimum, such as the cheapest dyes. As your piece demonstrates, the patch looked pretty good the day the repaired torba was reclaimed. How it looked XX years later wasn't the repair person's concern.

Rich Larkin

Marla Mallett

Hi folks,

Yes, repair people have definitely improved in recent years in terms of the yarns/dyes used. I learned the hard way to be cautious...I bought a Kurdish piece from SE Anatolia with perfectly good-looking reweaves, then washed it and had horrible dyes running from every repair spot.

As for oranges: a young woman gave a presentation at a Washington ICOC in the 1970s that dealt with natural dyeing in the Melas area of Turkey. She showed slides and also samples of yarns that came out of the dyepots while she was there: they included the most electric oranges you can imagine. There were gasps of astonishment throughout the lecture hall. It seemed unbelievable. I wonder if someone might have retained some notes from that presentation? Or perhaps knows if that lecture was published?

There are gorgeous oranges in early Anatolian kilims, but Turkish dealers have a fit if they are called that...I've learned to immediately expect a correction: "That's not orange, that's 'apricot'!"

As for strong, "hot" looking madder reds, there are lots of those in old pieces from Central Anatolia--really strong corals. These, Harald Bohmer explained to me, were "madder with decreased purpurin." I think that Pierre, a while back, told us exactly what that means, but I've forgotten.

Marla

Pierre Galafassi

Hi Marla, Marvin and all,

There is no doubt that the palette of synthetic dyes allows to make brilliant shades on wool which cannot be matched with natural dyes.
Every single shade made with natural dyes can be matched with synthetic dyes, but the reverse is not true.

However, it is equally true that natural dyes can yield a number of reasonably brilliant shades to which we may wrongly glue a «synthetic» label.

Coming back to Dr Boehmer’s correct explanation of a rather strong «coral» as being «madder without purpurin»:
The various botanical varieties of Rubia, including madder, are all mixes of chemically related but different anthraquinone reds. These individual dyes have slightly different red shades and, in part, quite significantly different dyeing properties.

A few examples to illustrate this point:

- The particular mix of anthraquinon dyes in Indian madder (munjeet) tends to yield slightly more orange (coral if you prefer) shades than rubia tinctoria in a standard dyeing process.

- During a dyeing operation some component of the dye mixes are more absorbed by wool than others, thus the dye-mix remaining in the dyebath after the end of the operation has another composition than at the beginning of the process. In particular, in a normal (high temperature) process a certain bluish red component of madder (purpurin) exhausts better than another yellowish red component. With the logical consequence that if one re-uses the partially «spent» dyebath (which therefore contains little or no purpurin) with fresh wool one obtains a rather bright coral (less bluish red) which would have not been achievable with the first bath.

- Varying the dyeing temperature one favors the preferential uptake of some components of the dye mix by wool and thus influences the shades too. There is more: some of the components are chemically modified by a high temperature treatment, like pseudo-purpurin which is converted into purpurin, thus, in this case, a drift to a bluer & duller shade of red.

- Then, there is of course the possibility of obtaining brighter reds and oranges with rubia by mordanting the wool with tin instead of alum.

Best regards
Pierre