| sprice@hsc.vcu.edu
Dear Friends, In another thread there was considerable discussion (and
confusion) about some things Harald Bohmer said about dyes. I found the
source of the statements, and perhaps I can clarify what he said and
meant. His article, by the way, is about as good a discussion of the topic
as I've seen, and I recomment it to anyone interested in dyes. Here's a
link to it: http://www.dobag.com.au/dobag/ In
a nutshell, Bohmer notes that the synthetic dyes that are generally used
by weavers in western and central Asia are rather "clean" primary colors.
That is, there are only three of them, a red, a yellow and a blue, and
each of the three is relatively close to being a pure primary, without
much representation of colors other than the one predominating in each. He
refers to this as absolutely monochromatic, which is, I'm sure, simply a
poor choice of words. As he recognizes, any color can be generated by
appropriately mixing the three primaries. Natural dyes, on the other hand,
are generally not so "clean". That is, the reds generally contain
significant amounts of yellow and blue; the blue contains significant
amounts of red and yellow, etc. This much, I believe, is fact. He then
goes on to assert that the reason natural dyes look good with each other
is that they already harmonize because of their "non-purity" as primary
colorants. This is an interesting notion; maybe it's right, maybe it
isn't. He further asserts that the weavers, when using synthetic dyes,
don't mix them. If this were so, there would only be three colors in rugs
dyed with synthetic dyes, and the garish greens and lavenders (to name
just two) wouldn't exist. So, this assertion seems to be an overstatement.
I think this is a reasonable representation of the thoughts Bohmer
expressed in that article. In any case, it's well worth the time it takes
to read it. Regards, Steve Price |