Reviving an old shade of red: dyeing with rotted alder buckthorn bark

Abstract

Alder buckthorn (Frangula alnus Mill., paakspuu in Estonian) is known as a traditional textile dye source in many European countries. Primarily, berries and leaves were used for dyeing, as was the bark. Several Estonian archival sources mention that alder buckthorn bark was used to dye woolen yarn red. The descriptions usually state that to get red the bark was left to rot outside over winter before dyeing. Although fermenting alder buckthorn bark in wood ash lye to achieve red has been described in historical and contemporary literary sources, no experiments with combining rotting the bark and using boiling method have been reported.

This article gives an overview of alder buckthorn bark dyeing, focusing on printed and archival Estonian sources that describe methods to dye woolen yarnred with alder buckthorn bark. A six-month-long practical experiment was conducted to test the influence of rotting on colours achievable with alder buckthorn bark. Two methods of rotting – on the ground and underground – were tested. The results show that rotted alder buckthorn bark gives a warm orange-to-red colour that can be turned violet by soaking the dyed yarns in wood ash lye. The lightfastness of the achieved colours was in line with the typical light fastness of natural dyes, displaying a greyscale rating of 2-3, on a scale of 1-5.

These results unveil Estonian historical methods of dyeing red with rotted alder buckthorn bark, a local dye source used in Estonia in the 19th century and earlier. The dyed yarns can be used as visual references when searching for alder buckthorn bark dyed textiles in the museum collections and can help interpret dye analysis results of historical and archeological textiles.

Keywords: alder buckthorn, bark, natural dyes, dyeing traditions, 19th century, rotting