The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Coloring Finishing And Painting Wood
77. Indigo.—The indigo plant supplies an old dyestuff that was gradually introduced into Europe during the fourteenth century, and which replaced a somewhat similar tho inferior blue dye called "woad," after encountering serious opposition, especially in" Germany. Indigo dye was made from the leaves and herbacious parts of the East Indian indigo plant.
At present, Manila and Medras are the important shipping points for the natural indigo dye. This dye, used for making various shades of blue, was formerly considered to be the most permanent of all the old-time vegetable colors.
Synthetic coal-tar indigo, which is made from naphthalene, has recently very largely displaced the old vegetable dyestuff, because it is identically the same chemically, and is equal to the plant dye in fastness of color. The new colors are much more easily applied than the old. Strong claims are now made for certain synthetic indigo vat dyes which are said to have greater fastness to light than the old vegetable indigo colors which were the raw material for producing about 50 shades of blue. Many coal-tar colors, some of them being synthetic Indigo, Indoin, Methylene .Blue, Diamine Blue, Immedial Blue, and others, are used on cotton; while synthetic Indigo, Alizarin Cyanin, Anthracene Blue, Gallamite, Sulphocyanin, and other dyes, are now common substitutes for the old vegetable indigo.
The wood-finisher of a generation ago used vegetable indigo dye in a number of stains for wood, especially when a blue or purple was wanted. Blue tones are rarely wanted on wood, hence indigo was not often used alone, but was rather frequently found in mixtures of various colors, especially with logwood in making shades of purple.
78. Aloes Extract.—A dye produced from aloes is reported to come in greenish to violet colors. It is made from the leaves of certain aloe trees belonging to the lily family and growing largely in the old world. This extract is not very commonly quoted on the American market at present. Formerly it was occasionally used with alkanet root and dragon's blood in making brown stains.
79. Madder Extract.—Until quite recently a dye was extensively made from the peeled roots of the madder plant, which was formerly grown in Holland, Germany, France, and the Levant as a perennial herb. The plants were probably imported after about 1507 from the East Indies where they seem to have originated. The colors which the madder roots produced were known as Turkey-red, madder brown, madder carmine, madder purple, and madder orange.
Synthetic alizarine dyes which are made from anthracene have very largely displaced madder root colors, since the discovery was made that the active coloring-principle of alizarine is the same as that found in this vegetable dyestuff.
