Madder

July 2025

A perennial (Ruba tinctorium in the same family as coffee), the fleshy roots can be harvested for use after a few years [1] to yield one of the most light-fast of natural dyes (the main colourant is alizarin). The plant roots used in our local cloth-mills’ dyehouses may have been sourced locally, though after the mid-1700s most was imported from France, the Netherlands and Turkey.

October 2025

The particular mordant, which helps bind the dye to the wool fibres, and the temperature of the dye vat affects the colour: brick red, oranges and pinks with alum (notably in the medieval period when this mordant was imported from Spain and Southern Europe), bright red with tin chloride (from around 1800, when the Dudbridge dyeworks led the way, for coarser flannel and soldiers’ uniforms), and browns, grays and purples with iron sulfate (copperas) [2]. By 1885 synthetic alizarin had supplanted madder.

Madder was also used in mixtures with other dyes, eg in a recipe for black (eg affording a speciality broadcloth from hereabouts, thanks to the effect of the natural salts in the water); and in the Woad vat [3], perhaps to help with fermentation and the reduction of blue indigo to soluble leuco-indigo, as well as modifying the particular hue.

We will gather roots in summer 2026 for test dyeing and post pictures of the results here.

References

1 Wild Colours - Madder dye plant

2 Encyclopaedia Britannica vol. VI 1797

3 The History and Practice of 18th C dyeing by John Edmonds, Historic Dye Series no. 2