Colouring Textiles: A History of Natural Dyestuffs in Industrial Europe (review)

Colouring Textiles: A History of Natural Dyestuffs in Industrial Europe. By Agustí Nieto-Galan. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. Pp. xxv+246. i97.

Colouring Textiles is a major work of organization of both natural dyestuffs and the individuals engaged in their production and application during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly the early period of widespread industrialization. Agustí Nieto-Galan's study is divided into six main sections: the dyes and their taxonomy; sites of dyeing and printing, leading up to the factory system; the input of scientific studies; the diffusion of skills; the role of designers, including copyright and taste; and the impact of the onslaught of synthetic dyes from the late 1850s.

While the content is to some extent selective, the story is equally applicable to all parts of Europe, since the same dyes and processes were adopted, with regional variations, everywhere. Thus, there was a strong interest in copying the designs and processes of India and the Levant, sources of indigo and alizarin, respectively. African prints imitated in Europe, particularly Britain, were sent in vast quantities to the colonies. European textile printers adopted designs for home markets that reflected public taste and prevalent cultural dictates. Nieto-Galan includes much that is new about the Spanish contribution, which is less known among historians compared to France, Britain, Germany, and Austria. In all these countries, the energy, charisma, and wide-ranging contacts of often self-taught individuals were responsible for the acquisition and diffusion of knowledge.

Unlike dyeing, mechanized calico, or textile, printing was well-suited to the factory system. It expanded in the early 1800s and involved several power-driven devices quite apart from cylinder machines. As the author points out, however—and despite claims made in patents—multicolor roller printing was not technically feasible until after 1840. Around that time, mechanized block printing was also introduced. As with cylinder printers, it brought about massive layoffs.

Experienced colorists, designers, and other leaders in what the author calls the "republic of chemist-dyers" made up the itinerant group on which the diffusion of skills relied. Espionage in all its forms was widespread, and often officially condoned. Discretion and apparent naïveté were among the qualities that helped gain access to workshops and laboratories. Later, international exhibitions were sites for exchange of information. Publications, including reports of juries and translations, were served up as technical treatises and advertisements.

What emerges strongly from this wide-ranging study is a sense that science, despite the rhetoric of its proponents, played little direct role in improving the manufacturing processes but did contribute considerably as a monitoring activity. It was through quality control of both dyestuffs and colored fabrics and tests for adulteration, which was rampant in the mid-nineteenth century, that the scientific input was greatest. Thus were founded the forerunners of the modern analytical and coloristic laboratories. The laboratory study of mordants, the dye-fixing agents, and other chemicals eventually became a significant facet of dyeing technology. Chemistry also played a great part in the ancillary, but critical, art of bleaching, though even here, as the author shows, the historical picture is not as simple as previously assumed. Old habits died hard, and time-consuming, laborious ways persisted.

Despite the advent of synthetic dyes, colorists and manufacturers, as well as quite a few scientists, remained loyal to the natural products, in which fortunes and careers were heavily invested. Ways were found to improve the yields of vegetable crops, and in some cases even to extract almost pure colorants. While few of the early synthetic dyes offered the much cherished solidity (resistance to light and washing) displayed by many of their natural rivals, the former were bound to succeed. Ease of use, quality, price, and changing fashion that placed more emphasis on brilliancy rather than permanency saw to that.

Colouring Textiles contains few errors of fact. It should be pointed out, however, that Ivan Levinstein in...