thanks for the heads up.

Db

--------------------

Db

How black was black in the period -Depends on the material and process used -linen does not take dye well at all when compared silk and cotton . Black (ish) wool would have been relatively easier to produce as black sheep produce black wool (not true black) this black or dark blackish/brownish coloured wool can be further colour enhanced by overdying with another dark colour. Wear, exposes to the elements oxidisation of dye mordants etc all play a part in how black it remains. Black/grey/brown and white wool were adopted by monastic orders as a sign of humility so I really do doubt that it was an extraordinarily expensive colour. Lists of livery colours also attest to its popularity particularly as one part of a parti-colour garment.

For random out-on-the-streets paitings or painting of religious scenes black was used very much, HOWEVER red was the #1 most common color all over the body. Again, rich-folk are patrons of paintings, so is it just taste in expensive style or was it REALLY that common? Where the heck are Bill and Tedd so we can go find out?? In the mean time, I guess its just a matter of being objective to written accounts.

durring the 1470s a force mobilized from the Black Forest region, All donned comlpetely in black. OK, so here is a military account of EVERY member of the army dressed head to toe in black. How big was the force? I dont know. Was it just the leading noble showing off? I dont know. But black was POPULAR no doubt, regardless of who used it and when.

Going into "how black was black"? Our friend who posted above has a VERY practicle way of looking at it. Look at your own wardrobe and that of the stores you visit. One companies' black might be very different from another. Heck, as an artist, I can attest to the variations in ink shades of black, from using blue bases or brown bases or even (rarely) red bases! Eh? wierd but true!

So I would say, fill a tub with your chosen black dye (dont forget the salt!) and throw in the pieces that are to be blackened one at a time. The 1st one will be pretty darned shadow-black, while the 100th is gonna have more of a gleen resembling the base of the dye (blue, brown, whatever) To me, that seems pretty gol-darned authentic!

Think of what it had to have been like to mobilize a force trying to show bits of "uniformity". The dyer says "you got HOW many people needing livery/tabbards in black??" They'll do their darndest to get the order filled in time however they can! Ill bet dollars to donuts its like todays companies, do whatever it takes to get the order filled; by the time the lower end of the order starts to show its flaws, the customer will be LONG gone! Muahahahaaa!!!

Ask your buddy who he is portraying. Would his lord (or he, if private purchase) have paid for prime-condition black-is-black? Or would he have been one of those to get the "eh, this is close enough!" kind of black?

-Jason

--------------------

~ Jason Banditt Adams
Illustrator for the gaming industry
www.Rogue-Artist.com

oak gall or other tannin and iron based blacks, produce a grey/blue black which is fugitive and reactive - it is this one that can rot the cloth.

Composite over dyeing will give a 'black' of sorts.

As the others have said it is usually a composite, the more dye you use to get the depth of colour the more expensive it is.

The blakc for Percy's men, assuming that all of his men were in fact given such a livery dole and not just his immediate household, would range from the cheaper sort for the lower orders and dearer darker for the better ones.

Also you need to take into account the type of cloth too, you wouldn't expect dear colours on cheap cloth and vice versa.

--------------------

Thanks for the info. We may end up going a bit generic afterall since his presentation is coming up fast. He wants to represent an archer retained in the service of Sir William Gascoigne, one of Percy's captains. So it would prolly be cloth issued by Gascoigne himself. That is why I am curious as to what grade of cloth Stephen would have issued. I think we may end up using a dark navy wool over dyed in dark brown in order to achive a "black".

thanks,

Db

--------------------

Db

--------------------

~ Jason Banditt Adams
Illustrator for the gaming industry
www.Rogue-Artist.com

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jancemeijer von Magnus Fülkim:
Of the paintings from the era and area (though I agree many paintings are of rich folk) black was the #1 most popular color of upper (or outter) clothing for male and female.

---

I think there is a real danger in assuming that the colours and shandes depicted in period artwork accurateley represent what would have been worn by the individuals portrayed.

Black paint is far easier to achieve than black dye.

During the early medieval period especially realistic protrayal of colour clearly unimportant to some audiences/producers (purple horses on the Bayeux Tapestry for example).

We do know that the rich druing the medieval period wore thier wealth (cut & quality of cloth being mentioned in many sumptuary laws). If we are seeing 'black' on both the rich and poor i would suggest that they would have been achieved in different ways and the end result would have been clear to the naked eye (even if they were both dark colours).

Tuppence
N.

--------------------

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nathan Beal:
I think there is a real danger in assuming that the colours and shandes depicted in period artwork accurateley represent what would have been worn by the individuals portrayed.

Tuppence
N.

---

I dont believe I am in any danger by assuming anything. *thud* hey, where did that arrow come from??

Granted and I am not debating the idea that lower classes used lower-end dyes, as this was illustrated later in my statement.

However, as a practical artist, with an education in such and regarding art history, it is also foley to enlist the idea that an artist would not accurately portray what his patron has demanded of him. When someone hires you to make artwork, not only does your reputation depend on teh quality of the produced piece, but so does the pay and thus youre ability to feed yourself! Of coarse the black is going to be top-notch black in a painting, as all colors will look brand new and bright. I doubt ole Chuck the bold would pay well if his nice fire-engine red doublet looked pink in the painting, hey

Some things may have been changed in the portrait from what might have actually been there, such as specifics of jewelry, books in the background, etc. Royalty would have no need to demand thier finery be "embellished upon" for it was already spectacular. But for all the rest (especially those pesky medieval German nobles, with thier multitudes of levels of nobility, all trying to out do one another) always trying to make themselves look a little better off than maybe they were.

(GET TO THE POINT JASON!) Ok, It is all based on popular trends, and the fact that so very many individuals' portraits show them to be wearing black as the main outter garment means that this color had to be farily (if not REALLY, really) popular.

Truely the greatest percentage of these black-clad portraits come from Italy. The German portraits (when they are portraits and not scenes) also show predominantly black outter-wear. The fact that Germanic scenes show Black quite regularly as "outter wear" i.e. at play, battle and festivities, begs the idea that black was not just the "finery" displayed when having "your picture done". All purple horses aside, being I do not have that picture in my files, such fantasy is not included in my outline.

Work wear on the other hand tended to lean more toward blues, green and browns with intermediate red and blacks. The lowest classes (and by late 15th C germany there became a deffinite gray area in lower class, in fact creating a "middle class" of sorts), though perferring natural dyes made either by themselves or cheaply bought, still fancied black either every-so-often or as thier "sunday best".

There fore I theorize that the popularity of black as a color, used primarily in display, was quite popular all the way around and therefore had to be in common use (in various qualities). As such, a lord outfitting his men with livery consisting of black, would put a little more money into the dye, to have his "colors" really shine! But again, as theorized, his best man would have REALY nice black, while is second cousin twice removed might have "eh, brownish-black is close enough"

-Jason

--------------------

~ Jason Banditt Adams
Illustrator for the gaming industry
www.Rogue-Artist.com

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nathan Beal:

Black paint is far easier to achieve than black dye.
Tuppence
N.

---

how so?

Ive never looked into the natural ingredients for black dye, but Im having a nutter of a time getting the natural ingredents together to make black pigment for my egg tempra for painting my Pavaze. Im about ready to jsut buy synthetic dye! So far the whole, crushing bugs thing isnt really my thing But then again Im being instructed by a Russian Ikonography artist who is REALLY strict on pigment creation!

What are the natural ingredients to black clothes dye? oops! Or are you assuming they are different??

Are you experienced in the mixing of egg yoke with pigments to produce the egg tempra used in 15C illumination and paintings? Its quite fun, you should try it. Maybe Gwen knows the way dye was made.... OH GWEEENNN!!!

-Jason

--------------------

~ Jason Banditt Adams
Illustrator for the gaming industry
www.Rogue-Artist.com

I'd suggest another read through of what both g23b and Nathan have to say, as they've pretty much answered the question. Anything I could add would be redundant.

This was for his BA's senior seminar and it consited of a 20-30 minute lecture followed by a question and answer section. I convinced him that it would be best for him not to dress up for the presentation and volounteered to be the dummy. He touched on liveries and the color issue for which I just made a bend in red & black. The "black" I think looked good. It wasn't a true modern black but it wasn't navy or dark brown.

thanks for the help folks.

Db

--------------------

Db

Forget it, Ill find someplace a little more open to speculative thought and a sense of COMMUNITY!

-Jason

--------------------

~ Jason Banditt Adams
Illustrator for the gaming industry
www.Rogue-Artist.com

Jason

"how so?"

because the range of black pigments in painting is wider and more stable and not usually composite.

eg:

lamp black
ivory black
bone black
charcoal
etc

all are natural blacks (even if they have colour casts within them) and very stable.

Dyed blacks are not black - at least the majority are just shades of brown or whatever.

The link that Nathan rightly points out re painting is that the painter will be using pigments to represent black, not dyestuffs*, so a poor peasant's black clothing may well look as black as the donor.

Representing dyed material on a panel is very hard.

As for accurate portrayal? accurate in our modern expectations of realism or accurate in terms of what the client wants portrayed?
The painting is the means by which reality can be stretched, certainly in the late middle ages 'realistic' painting did not mean truthful representations of real life.

Using paintings for anythign other than a general idea of cloth colour is precarious because it is cheaper to paint a 'rich' colour on a small work than it is to actually dye and tailor the actual cloth. eg many many miniatures show people wearing all kinds of bright colours, because the quantities used are miniscule and the requirement for those images is to be bright and not an accurate rendition of real clothing. So what you get is peasants with bright blues and reds, highly unlikely to be worn by them in real life.

The use of intrinsically valuable pigments over -rode any considerations of realism.

I can recommend Mirror of the Artist - Craig Harbison - for an excellent perspective on late medieval northern european art.

*not saying that dyestuffs were not used in painting, they were.

--------------------

I bring it up because one of the things covered in the book is how some clients spcified what pigments they wanted used in the art the commissioned, specifically because they wanted to control the final look of the commissioned work. I loved finding out that Borso d'Este paid for the frescoes in the Palazzo Schifania by the square foot, while the Florentine merchant Giovanni de' Bardi paid by time and material; one obviously valuing the end result differently than the other. Fascinating stuff!

--------------------

Too bad you bought it, I was going to gift you with a copy cause I knew you'd love it. Oh well.

I have somewhere (or have read - its late!) of there being Italian wool samples of pieces dyed with blue. Only the truest-best-blues were able to be then overdyed to create black. The colour of the dyer's blue, matched to these guild samples, determined the price of the black cloth later. My apologies in advance if I have remembered this incorrectly - I will try to dig out the reference at the weekend.

Although later, the V&A book 17th-18th century clothing in detail (will but the proper title up later) is worth a look for blacks. There is quite alot of embroidery which does shown in very close-up of black work, etc. This black - even aged as it is and disintigrating because of the amount of iron used as a mordant, is actually very black. Perhaps these later, (but pre-chemical dyes) items are what we should be referring to when discussing this 'how black is black' question?

--------------------

I am not sure where this was originally published as a correspondent sent this to me.

A small summary. 'Bruneta' was the most expensive black. (a "deep, velvety black"). First the cloth or wool was dyed in the woad vat. Then it was mordanted, with boiling water and alum. Then, it went into a madder dye-bath.

To quote what I vaguely remembered last night-
"In Barcelona the guild statutes state exectly what value of woad vat is required to dye each quality of cloth into bruneta black. Effectively, the various shades of blue were standardised and samplers of all these shades, with a notice to their corresponding monetary values, were kept in the city hall for each type of material. There, all pieces of cloth had to be brought to be examined by municipal officers. If the correct shade of blue had been attained, then the dyer might proceed to mordant and dye with madder. Otherwise, the cloth had to be given another dip into the woad vat.

The necessary shade of blue to get a true black is actually rather dark - only slightly lighter than a navy blue. (When the blue ground is not dark enough, the shade obtained looks more like a dark maroon, whence the names brunette and bruneta, meaning brownish black.)"

further along in the paper...

"Some of the best quality woollen cloths woven in Flanders were even dyed black by top-dyeing the dark blue material with kermes. This was a highly luxurious variety of bruneta, an example of which is given by the black selvedge of a piece of scarlet cloth kept in the Datini Archives in Prato."

The article goes on to discuss other types of black, including 'negre' black using gall-nut powder and iron filings (very common in Spain and still known as 'Spanish blacks' in the 17th century), and 'forbidden blacks'(those dyes which cannot be used on certain types of cloth).

Gina

--------------------

even i tried dyeing with oak galls - i was making an ink batch and decided to dye a linen scrap, again more a greyish tinge than black.

Vicky, as I am sure you are aware has had a major challenge in getting pre-logwood blacks, hopefully she has sorted it with a combo of black wool and over dyeing, it it meant to be the cheaper sort of black.

the 'brun' in both the above recipes seems to nod to brown and certainly the colour mixes would becast that way, esp think that if negra is different, ie black.

[ 05-05-2006: Message edited by: gregory23b ]

--------------------

Woo hoo

thanks Gina.

--------------------

Yes, current experiments are with a natural 'black' fleece, overdyed. The wool starts a dark brown in truth, and the overdyeing (trying all sorts at the moment, though woad is obviously promising) darkens it further. Still a compromise, of course, no evidence for it being done this way, but it's better than a 'chemical' black.

quote:

---

Actually, the best 'black' I've got is the silk girdle that Gina did for me in a woad/madder combo.

---

Thanks!
Seriously though, I'm not someone who dyes textiles for a living. My experience is very very limited. I expect that someone who knew the processes could achieve a wonderful black, simply because I have managed to get quite close (the silk Vicky mentions was even more 'black' on the piece of wool that got thrown into the pot). In the same way that I have yet to achieve a red coat red - yet that colour was also one that was vegetable dyed.

I agree with the others who have said we shouldn't be looking to paintings for colour shades - we should be looking at textiles which are in museums that are earlier than chemical dyes. That will give us a much clearer picture.

If anyone is in Nuremburg I know they have a wonderful medieval girdle which is decribed as black - but I only have black and white photos at present!

Glad the books arrived safely! A nice easy one to try is Number 25...

Gina

[ 05-07-2006: Message edited by: Gina ]

--------------------

We'll just have to get to Nurenburg!

[ 05-07-2006: Message edited by: Gina ]

--------------------