Tag: weld

Today’s adventure is simply about dyeing with the quercitron and the colors I got.

Dr. Edward Bancroft is credited with utilization of the Eastern Black Oak for yellow dyes.  In his book, Experimental Researches Concerning the Philosophy of Permanent Colours; and the Best Means of Producing Them, by Dyeing, Calico Printing, &c, he devotes an entire chapter to Of the Properties and Uses of Quercitron Bark. If you wish to read about the history of quercitron, the above links are worth pursuing.

You can also read what I’ve written about it as well.

And if you have read a bit of what I have written about using quercitron for the flammegarn, you will recall that I set it up the night before.  For today’s dye bath, I used 15 g of the powdered bark, soaked in warm water.  This morning, I strained it out, and set aside the coffee filter to reuse later.  I soaked the yarn to be dyed while the dye pot was heating up.  The yarn was premordanted with alum and tartaric acid a week or so ago.

Filtering out the dye matter is important.  The quercitron is finely ground, and if left loose in the dye pot with the yarn, it would easily get entangled in the yarn or fleece, and require a lot of time to remove it.  Trust me, it’s not worth skipping this step!  Coffee filters are ideal, and then the sludge may be set aside to dry out for reuse.  I do this with some other dyes, such as cochineal and brazil wood, even though subsequent uses will be weaker.

I used my largest dye pot, even though I was dyeing a small amount of yarn.  The reason for this is that the temperature of the dye bath is more easily controlled.  This is critical to keep the dye toward the yellow, rather than brownish, side.

When I made the flammegarn last weekend, I kept the yarn in the dye pot only about 20 minutes.   Today, the yarn continued in the pot on the heat for an hour, and then was given time to rest in the cooling liquor.  After that, it was dipped in a vinegar bath, which, as Bancroft notes, causes the dye to move toward yellow rather than toward a brownish or greenish color.  While I have not tried it, Bancroft states that “tin, mixed with a decoction of the bark, produces and exceedingly beautiful lively yellow.”  Perhaps an afterbath of tin would be worth trying.

In the pot is lace weight alpaca, and handspun white fleece.  The final results are below.

As you can see, the alpaca took up the color more deeply – perhaps it is the nature of the fiber.

The Eastern Black Oak (quercus velutina) is a common, medium-sized to large oak of the eastern and midwestern United States, with a range that runs essentially east of the Mississippi. Other names for this tree are yellow oak, quercitron, yellow bark oak, or smooth bark oak. It grows best on moist, rich, well-drained soils, but can also grow in less optimal conditions. Its acorns take two years to mature, unlike those of other oaks, and are rather squat and round.  It belongs to the family of red oaks.

Black oaks are medium to large trees, growing to a height of 80-100 feet, with trunks about 3 feet in diameter. The leaves have 7-9 lobes, and vary in length, from 4 to 10 inches. During the summer, the leaves are a crisp green color with paler shading underneath. In autumn, the leaves turn to red. The bark of young black oaks is smooth with light grey coloring, but with age, deep furrows develop and the bark becomes thicker and darker. The inner bark is an orangish-yellow color, and it is from this that the dye quercitron is derived.

According to Wikipedia,

Quercitron is a yellow dye obtained from the bark of the Eastern Black Oak (Quercus velutina), a fine forest tree indigenous in North America. The name is a shortened form of quercicitron, from Latin quercus, oak, and citron, lemon, and was invented by Dr. Edward Bancroft (1744-1821), who by act of parliament in 1785 was granted special privileges in regard to the importation and use of the substance. The dyestuff is prepared by grinding the bark in mills after it has been freed from its black epidermal layer, and sifting the product to separate the fibrous matter, the fine yellow powder which remains forming the quercitron of commerce. The ruddy-orange decoction of quercitron contains quercitannic acid, whence its use in tanning, and an active dyeing principle, quercitrin, C₂₁H₂₀O₁₂.

Edward Bancroft was an interesting character, born in the mid-eighteenth century in pre-revolutionary America.  During his lifetime he was – according to varying sources – apprenticed to a physician, a scientist, a writer, as well as a spy and double agent during the American Revolutionary War.  He was a secretary to American Commission in Paris, working for Benjamin Franklin, as well as spying on the British, and for the British.  (Whew!  That must have been complicated!)  After his life as a spy, his scientific side is credited with having discovered that the inner bark of the Eastern Black Oak, a tree found throughout the midwest and east coast, produced a colorfast and lightfast yellow dye which matched, and possibly surpassed, the common European yellow dyes of the time, such as weld and fustic.  Bancroft received English and French patents giving him the right to import the bark, and this made him a rich man in the latter years of his life.  Before his death in 1821, Bancroft had published a number of books on natural science, and on dyeing; it is on this latter subject he wrote two volumes, published in 1814:  Experimental Researches Concerning the Philosophy of Permanent Colours.

The inner bark of quercus velutina is finely ground before being used as a dye.  It is my hope that the harvesting of this bark is done sustainably, without damaging or killing the tree, unless it is harvested for its wood.