Introduction

Colour was one of the fundamental elements of fashion. While there is an assumption that visually attractive bright colours were reserved only for those who held power and authority in society, historical inventories and visual records show that ordinary Italians were receptive to colour fashions and keen to adopt the latest trends. The dress historian Ulinka Rublack has shown the speed with which colour fashions spread across social classes. For instance, when yellow became fashionable in the Swiss city of Basel at the beginning of the sixteenth century, it initially gained popularity among the wealthy but soon extended to include prostitutes, journeymen, apprentices and maidservants, as well as minor officials and artisans. By 1520, nearly everyone in the city wore yellow and the colour appeared in many innovative combinations.¹

The ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ database confirms that colours in all shades and qualities were worn by artisanal groups in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As Stefania Montemezzo has shown in Chapter 7 above, Italian artisans and shopkeepers owned clothing and accessories in a wide array of colours, including intense and spectacularly dyed textiles and garments. Skirts, petticoats, aprons, shirts and sleeves were dyed in a kaleidoscope of colours, including crimson red, pink, deep black, light and medium blue, purple, light yellow and different shades of brown.²

However, not all colours held the same fashionable appeal. The meaning and value of colour were determined not only by the generic colour but the precise shade and brilliance defined how the colour was perceived and what it signified. The deeper or more brilliant the tone was, the more appealing it was to consumers. What kinds of colours were worn by our artisans and what did these look like?

To recover the visual look of the colours referenced in the inventories of the everyday artisans and explore how these colours were created in that time, we organised a colour workshop ‘Making invisible colours visible’ in 2019. Drawing on dye recipes dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, our objective was to explore the essence of colours of different grade and quality, and what specific colouring methods and dyestuffs were available for achieving some of the most precious colours in cost-effective ways.

The experiment

Red and black were historically two of the most expensive colours. Due to the saturated tone, superb colourfastness and complex dye processes, the finest reds and blacks enjoyed extraordinary popularity and prestige throughout the Renaissance period.³ Professional dyers made great efforts in the period to produce vibrant colours and perfect shades. This is evident in the first practical recipe book on commercial dyeing, the Plichto, written by Gioanventura Rosetti and published in Venice in 1548. His collection of dye recipes included thirty-five recipes for dyeing red, and twenty-one for black.⁴

Traditionally, the best scarlet and crimson reds were dyed with expensive insect dyes, ‘grain’, crimson dye, or cochineal.⁵ However, lower artisanal classes had access to similar beautiful shades of red, which were created by using cheaper dyestuffs such as local madder brazilwood. These alternatives were sometimes deliberately used to imitate expensive scarlet and crimson reds. For example, brazilwood, when used on plain fabric or madder-dyed fabric, served as an important source for imitating crimson silk and scarlet wool derived from grain.⁶

In his Plichto, Gioanventura Rosetti provided instructions on how to dye wool with madder and brazilwood to achieve a look that resembled scarlet:

While the recipe may present challenges for modern dyers, particularly regarding details such as the exact duration denoted by ‘until as much as you would say six paternosters’, following the instructions using alum mordanted wool and silk revealed that such imitations could produce beautiful and intensive reds comparable to those dyed with grain or crimson, although the colours were not very lightfast (Figure viii.1).⁸

Further experiments demonstrated that vibrant and captivating colours, including pink, blue, yellow, green, as well as new shades such as the colour ‘dove neck’ (colombino) could be obtained using locally available natural dyes such as safflower, woad, weld and dyer’s broom (Figures viii.2 and viii.3).⁹ The pink colour achieved using safflower, for instance, was so intense and bright that it appeared almost as if it had been created using synthetic dyes (Figure viii.4).

These methods brought a wide range of affordable colours within the reach of all social groups in the market. Additionally, simple and cost-effective methods for achieving desirable colours were widely circulated in cheap printed media, enabling men and women to create colours in the comfort of their own homes.¹⁰ One such colour was black, the colour of high fashion traditionally made by dyeing the fabric first in a blue woad solution and then dipping it in a red madder dye bath.¹¹ For example, a recipe directed at ‘women so that when they have spun yarn they know how to dye it in many colours’, circulated in various printed works, including the comprehensive Plichto and in the Dutch and French translations of Dificio de ricette, provided simple instructions for achieving a home-dyed ‘lustrous’ black using oak gall, vitriol and a small amount of gum arabic.¹²

Figure VIII.1 Dye experiments for expensive scarlet and kermes red imitations using madder and brazilwood. Recipe from the sixteenth-century dye manual Plichto by Gioanventura Rossetti.

Figure VIII.2 Bright yellow dyed with weld, based on a standardised historical dye recipe. Adding potash to the dye solution brightened the colour.

By testing early modern recipes, we gained valuable insights not only into the appearance and production methods of colours like ‘artisan black’ or imitation red but also into the high level of skill required by professional dyers to achieve precise shades and specific tones. Various factors in the dyeing process influenced the outcome, resulting in different shades. For example, in the case of yellows, we noticed that the colour achieved with dyer’s broom varied considerably depending on the specific crop used and the amount of potash added in the dye solution to enhance the brightness of the yellow colour.

Perhaps, then, the yellows worn in the city of Basel by wealthy individuals, artisans, maidservants and sex workers were not all equally bright or colourfast. Nevertheless, the wide range of dyeing methods and the availability of new colourants from the sixteenth century onward allowed people from all social classes to dress up in vibrant garments and embrace evolving colour fashions which relied increasingly on producing new fashionable colours in a cheaper way for a broader range of consumers.

Figure VIII.3 A range of naturally dyed silk fabrics, using historical recipes, on display at the Reconstructing Everyday Fashion Exhibition, Aalto University, September 2021. The samples demonstrate the variety of colours available for and used by early modern artisans.

Figure VIII.4 A sheet from a sample book showing bright pink silk samples dyed with safflower, using a standardised historical recipe.