Needlework As Art Part 25

We find that lime, chalk, white lead, and other mineral substances were employed by the ancients for the different approaches to dazzling whiteness. That of the lily, the emblem of purity, can only be emulated in textile or pictorial art by opaque substances reduced as much as possible by bleaching to the last expression of the colour of the raw material. Nothing that is transparent can be really white, as colours are seen through it, as well as the reflected lights on the two surfaces.

In painting, we can produce the effect of whiteness in different ways, leading by the gradation of tender colours and shadows up to a high light. But in textile art, which is essentially flat, it is necessary to pursue a different method, and that of isolation is the most simple and effective, and was well understood in Egypt, Greece, and India.

The white pattern, or flower, is surrounded with a fine dark line (black is the best), which effectually separates it from all the surrounding colours, and gives it the effect of light, even when the whiteness retains enough of the natural colour of the raw material to tone it down very perceptibly. The eye accepts it as white, and ignores the tint that pervades it, and is hardly to be expelled from silk or wool. Linen and cotton are the whitest of materials, after pa.s.sing through the hands of the chemist or the bleacher.

It is amusing to observe that Pliny regarded colours, whether vegetable or mineral, rather as useful for the pharmacopeia of his day, than as dyes or artistic pigments. He speaks contemptuously of the art of his time, and yet he gives some curious hints that are well worth collecting for experiment. His fragmentary information, though often inaccurate, is most valuable to those who are seeking once more to find lasting colours, and despair of discovering mordants that will fix the aniline tints. From him we learn more of the Egyptian colouring materials than of any others, as he named their sources, European, Asiatic, or African; and there is no doubt of the perfection of their mural pigments and textile dyes, which have remained unimpaired to the present time.

Renouf says that "painting, as it is now understood, was totally unknown to the Egyptians; but they understood harmony of colour,[304]

and formulated in it certain principles for decorative uses. They made the primary colours predominate over the secondary by quant.i.ty and position. They introduced fillets of white or yellow in their embroideries, as well as in their paintings, between reds and greens, to isolate them; and they balanced ma.s.ses of yellow with a due proportion of black." They never blended their colours, and had no sense of the harmony of prismatic gradations, or the melting of one tint into another; each was worked up to a hard and fast edge line. If in one part of a building, one set of colours predominated, they placed a greater proportion of other colours elsewhere, within the range of sight, so as to readjust the balance. Those they employed were mostly earthy mineral colours (used alike for frescoes and for painting cotton cloths, though vegetable dyes were needed for woollens and linens). These were: for _white_, pure chalk; for _black_, bone-black mixed with gum; for _yellow_, yellow ochre; for _green_, a mixture of yellow ochre and powdered blue gla.s.s; for _blue_, this same blue gla.s.s mixed with white chalk; for _red_, an earthy pigment containing iron and aluminium.[305] They understood the chemistry of bleaching, and the use of mordants in dyeing.[306]

The statistical records of China of the time of Hias (2205 B.C.), according to Semper, mention colours as being of five tints, and all the produce of the Chinese Empire.[307]

In the unchanging art of India, the ancient colours are used now.

Therefore, when we give the following list, we must suppose that it embraces all that have been known from the beginning.

Indian dyes are mostly vegetable. For _yellow_, akalbir, the root of the Datiscus Canabinus; also yellow is dyed with asbarg, the flower of the Cabul larkspur (_Delphinium sp._).

_Orange._ Soneri dyed with narsingar, the honey-scented flower of nyclanthes (_Arbor Tristis_).

_Scarlet_ is first dyed with cochineal (formerly with kermes), which gives a crimson colour; next with narsingar, which turns it vermilion.

_Purple_ is dyed first with cochineal (formerly kermes), afterwards with indigo.

_Lilac._ Ditto, only paler.

_Blue._ All shades of indigo.

_Green._ With indigo first, and next the various yellow dyes.

_Brown._ Sandal-wood, called "sandali;" almond colour (Badami).

_Grey._ Sulphate of iron and gold.

_Black._ Deepest shade of indigo.[308]

Speaking of Indian coloured textiles, Sir G. Birdwood says: "All violent contrasts are avoided. The richest colours are used, but are so arranged as to produce the effect of a neutral bloom, which tones down every detail almost to the softness and transparency of the atmosphere." He says that in their apparel both the colouring and the ornaments are adapted to the effect which the fabrics will produce when worn and in motion. "It is only through generations of patient practice that men attain to the mystery of such subtleties."

An outline, in black or some dark colour that harmonizes with the ground, or else worked in gold, is common in Indian work, not only for the purpose of isolating the colours of the design, but also to give a uniform tone to the whole surface of the texture. Their traditional arrangements of tints were thoroughly satisfying to the eye. But degenerated by European commerce, the artistic sense of beauty itself is disappearing throughout our Indian Empire.

Persian carpets (the fine old ones of the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries) give us lessons in the art of isolating colours. In these, a flower will lie upon a surface which contains two or more other tints, and as the design pa.s.ses over them, the outline colour is changed, so as to isolate the flower equally on the different grounds. This is done with such art that the eye ignores the transition till it is called to remark it. For instance, as a white, or no-coloured pattern, wanders over a green and red ground, the outline changes suddenly from green to red, and again to green as it leaves the opposite colour on the ground pattern.

Mr. Floyer speaks of the brilliancy and lasting qualities of the dyes which the Persians, by slow and tedious processes, extract from plants; from the "runaschk" (madder), a fine red; from the "zarili"

(the golden), which is a yellow flower from Khorasan, and also from the leaves of the vine, a bright yellow.[309] They import indigo from Shastra (or from India), by the Khurum river. He says these dyes are perfectly fast, leaving no trace on a wetted rubber, whereas the European dyes they sometimes use come off freely.

Pliny says the Gauls had invented dyes counterfeiting the purple of Tyre; also scarlet, violet, and green, all of these were dipped in the juices of herbs.[310]

Vitruvius says the Romans extracted dyes from flowers and fruits, but he neither specifies nor describes them.

The ancient Highland tartans were dyed with bark of alder for black, bark of willow for flesh colour. A lichen growing on stones supplied their violets and crimson.[311] The lichen on the birch-tree gives a good brown; heather gives red, purple, and green.[312]

Thus we see that pure colours for dyeing textiles have been extracted from vegetable substances--herbs, wood, seeds, flowers and fruits, mosses and sea-weeds;[313] mineral substances--earths, sands, ores, metals, rusts, and stones; animal substances--both of land, water, and air; beasts, fishes, sh.e.l.ls, birds, and insects.

It is evident, from the derivation of the word, that there were chromatic scales in colour before the phrase was ever applied to music.

The Greeks and Romans are supposed to have understood chromatic scales of tints--animal, vegetable, and mineral--and except with the intention of producing startling effects, they did not mix them. They felt that each was harmonious as a whole, and, unlike the Egyptians, they studied harmony. They arranged their scales according to the materials from which they were extracted, and kept those from different chemical sources apart, as being discordant.[314] One scale was that of the iodine colours, of and from the sea. Marine products are mostly iridescent. To comprehend this, think of the harmonious interchange of delicate tints, called by the ancients "purple," on a string of pearls. Sh.e.l.ls and sh.e.l.l-fish, sea-weeds and fish, furnished these dyes. They were called "conchiliata."

The chemistry of the arts of bleaching was not unknown to the ancients; but they reserved and regulated it for certain purposes, preferring to retain at least a part of the original colouring, as shades of grounding which served, as a surface glaze does in painting, to connect and harmonize the superinduced tints.

Experiments with the object of reviving this mode of producing harmonious combinations, have been made lately at the Wilton Carpet Works, by dyeing shades of colour on unbleached goat's and camel's hair, and sheep's wool; and the tones produced are beautifully soft and rich.

M. Edouard Charton ascribes the great change in the modern scales of colours to the discovery by the French, in the Gobelins, of a pure scarlet dye, the use of which made it necessary to raise the tone of all other colours. He says that scarlet was formerly represented by the dye called kermes, which indeed was not scarlet, but altered from crimson to something approaching it by the addition of narsingar, of which the bright yellow gave the scarlet effect.

M. Chevreul, director of the dyeing department of the Gobelins, has succeeded in composing the chromatic prism, to which I have already alluded, containing 4420 different tones. We may take it for granted, that from these may be selected any possible scale of tints required for decorative work. This vast area for choice of our material will impose on the artist of the future fresh responsibilities.

In the typical Oriental colouring, the whole arrangement was traditional, and it was irreligious to depart from what had been fixed by statute many centuries before, and only perfected by the experience of many generations of men; and this veneration for traditional custom has. .h.i.therto been prevalent in European art to a certain point. But the old conservative perfection of unadulterated colour has already been done away with. The freedom of experimental art is chartered, and mercantile interests now, as ever, govern the supply of materials.

Our normal bad taste and carelessness has been cast back on the lands which were the cradle of art, and we receive, to our surprise, gaudy, vulgar, and discordant combinations from the East, whence we drew our first inspirations. For the future we shall have to study ancient specimens, and correct our errors by the help of their teaching to the eye and mind.

Gas colours are at present our worst snares. They are in general very beautiful; but they are so evanescent, and fade into such unexpected and contradictory tones, that we cannot reckon upon them. When embroidering with the coloured materials of the day, we are in constant dread of what disastrous effect may be produced by the first shaft of sunshine that may fall from our moderately illuminated sky, through the uncurtained window.

The trade in colours can hardly be an honest one, till the means of fixing each tint permanently is ascertained.[315] At any rate, something should be done towards grouping them, with respect to their enduring qualities, so that when they fade, if fade they must, they may do so harmoniously, and in sympathy with each other; and while they are in their first glow they should be selected, as much as possible, from what Pliny calls natural colours,[316] which recall the exquisite effects of nature, searched out and displayed by every sunny gleam, reflected on each other in lovely tones, and subdued and veiled by pa.s.sing shadows. It is said that Mr. Wardle, of Leek, is now seeking for dyes of pure unadulterated colours, and mordants to fix them. He deserves all success.

The reason I have entered, in even so cursory a manner, into the history of colours is my desire to point out the great value placed, long ago, on the careful preparation of those used in ancient textile art; and to show how our forefathers sought them out in many lands and waters; how they noted their varieties; how they cla.s.sed and prized them for their endurance as well as for their pristine beauty; how they paid their weight in gold or silver for certain culminating tints; and how they, therefore, produced works which became matters of history and landmarks in civilization.

FOOTNOTES:

[283] "Seeing, they saw not, neither did they understand."

[284] See Pliny's "Natural History," which gives much information on the subject.

[285] E. Curtius, "Greek History;" Engl. Trans., i. p.

438; Blumner's "Technologie," p. 216.

[286] Charpentier "differentiates in every normal eye a sensibility for light, a sensibility for colour, and a sensibility for form (a visual sensibility)."--See "Modern Theories of Colour," _The Lancet_, August 19th, 1882, p. 276. We can perceive, by studying works of art, how variously these gifts are distributed, or, at any rate, how differently they are received and acted upon by individual minds.

[287] The effect of colour on the brain is a subject only just now beginning to attract attention.

Experiments on the insane have been made in Italy, especially, I believe, at Venice; and it is said to be ascertained that red and green are irritants, whereas windows glazed with blue gla.s.s alternating with white have sensibly calmed the nerves of the patients.

[288] Let us compare the beautiful creations of the Venetian school with the demoralizing brightness of aniline colours, or the opaque, earthy tints which some call beautiful, mistaking their dulness for softness and sobriety of colouring. But they, too, have their uses.

[289] Black and red are, in ecclesiastical work, the emblems of mourning.

[290] The Bardic rules in early Britain enjoined three simple colours: sky blue, the emblem of peace, for the bard and poet; green, for the master of natural history and woodcraft; spotless white (the symbol of holiness), for the priest and Druid.

[291] The blind man said that red was like the sound of a trumpet, which shows what a soul-stirring colour it was in his mind's eye.

[292] "Purpura" is supposed to mean crimson velvet. It came, like "cramoisi," to be a name for a tissue. Fr.

Mich.e.l.l quotes velvet of Vermeil-cramoisi, "violet and blue cramoisi, and pourpre of divers colours," but he says he never met with "pourpre blanche." Yule, ed.