Natural Colorants for Dyeing and Lake Pigments: Practical Recipes and Their Historical Sources

This simple handbook aims to enable readers to make their own lake pigments or dye their own textiles using dyes from naturally occurring raw materials in a simple way under relatively controlled conditions and using recipes optimised for easy use in the laboratory or indeed the classroom. The book provides the basic principles of dying and lake pigment making (using the term lake pigment in its original, historical, sense indicating a naturally occurring dye precipitated onto a conventional usually white substrate, frequently a form of hydrated alumina) and from these the reader can try modifying the conditions or the amount of raw material, for example, to obtain different results. Suggestions for simple modifications are given. Contents: Introduction Natural dyes and their sources - plants, insect reds and shellfish purple The techniques of dyeing and pigment making - the basic chemistry behind the processes Recipes for dyeing Recipes for pigment making Bibliography