Isatis tinctoria
Isatis tinctoria | |
---|---|
Woad flowers | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Plantae |
Clade: | Tracheophytes |
Clade: | Angiosperms |
Clade: | Eudicots |
Clade: | Rosids |
Order: | Brassicales |
Family: | Brassicaceae |
Genus: | Isatis |
Species: | I. tinctoria
|
Binomial name | |
Isatis tinctoria | |
Synonyms | |
|
Isatis tinctoria, also called woad (.
Since ancient times, woad was an important source of blue dye and was cultivated throughout Europe, especially in Western and Southern Europe. In medieval times, there were important woad-growing regions in England, Germany and France. Towns such as Toulouse became prosperous from the woad trade. Woad was eventually replaced by the more colourfast Indigofera tinctoria and, in the early 20th century, both woad and Indigofera tinctoria were replaced by synthetic blue dyes. Woad has been used medicinally for centuries. The double use of woad is seen in its name: the term Isatis is linked to its ancient use to treat wounds; the term tinctoria references its use as a dye.[3] There has also been some revival of the use of woad for craft purposes.[4]
In the Marche region, the cultivation of the plant was an important resource for the Duchy of Urbino in Italy. To fully understand the importance of the ford industry in the State of Urbino, it is enough to read the comprehensive Chapters of the art of wool in 1555, which dictated prescriptions regarding the cultivation and trade of woad, whether in loaves or macerated (powdered).[5]
Testifying to the importance that this crop had in the economy in addition to the archival documents was the identification of a hundred millstones surveyed by Delio Bischi in the Province of Pesaro and Urbino, the original use of which had become completely unknown as their memory had been lost.[6]
History of woad cultivation
Ancient use
The first archaeological finds of woad seeds date to the
Melo and Rondão write that woad was known "as far back as the time of the ancient Egyptians, who used it to dye the cloth wrappings applied for the mummies."[8] Skelton states that one of the early dyes discovered by the ancient Egyptians was "blue woad (Isatis tinctoria)."[9] Lucas writes, "What has been assumed to have been Indian Indigo on ancient Egyptian fabrics may have been woad."[10] Hall states that the ancient Egyptians created their blue dye "by using indigotin, otherwise known as woad."[11]
A dye known as סטיס, satis in
Celtic blue is a shade of blue, also known as glas celtig in
Gillian Carr conducted experiments using indigo pigment derived from woad mixed with different binders to make body paint. The resulting paints yielded colours from "grey-blue, through intense midnight blue, to black".
It has also been claimed that Caesar was referring to some form of copper- or iron-based pigment.[7] Analysis done on the Lindow Man did return evidence of copper. The same study also noted that the earliest definite reference to the woad plant in the British Isles dates to a seed impression on an Anglo-Saxon pot. The authors theorize that vitrum could have actually referred to copper(II) sulfate's naturally occurring variant chalcanthite or to the mineral azurite.[22] A later study concluded the amount was "not of sufficient magnitude to provide convincing evidence that the copper was deliberately applied as paint".[23]
Woad was an important dyeing agent in much of Europe and parts of England during the medieval period. However, dye traders began to import indigo during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which threatened to replace locally grown woad as the primary blue dye.[18] The translation of vitrum as woad may date to this period.[24]
Medieval period onwards
Woad was one of the three staples of the European dyeing industry, along with
- No mader, welde, or wood no litestere
- Ne knew; the flees was of his former hewe;
The three colours can be seen together in tapestries such as
In
The prosperous woad merchants of
After cropping the woad eddish could be let out for grazing sheep.[28] The woad produced in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire in the 19th century was shipped out from the Port of Wisbech,[29] Spalding and Boston,[30] both the last to northern mills and the USA. The last portable woad mill was at Parson Drove, Cambridgeshire, Wisbech & Fenland Museum has a woad mill model, photos and other items used in woad production.[31] A major market for woad was at
Use as Chinese medicine
The woad plant's roots are used in Traditional Chinese medicine to make a medicine known as banlangen (bǎnlán'gēn 板蓝根) that purports to have antiviral properties.[33] Banlangen is used as an herbal medicinal tea in China for colds and tonsular ailments. Used as a tea, it has a brownish appearance and (unlike most Chinese medicines) is mildly sweet in taste.
Woad and indigo
Celtic Blue | ||
---|---|---|
(46, 91, 255°) | ||
Source | Internet | |
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte) |
The dye chemical extracted from woad is indigo, the same dye extracted from "true indigo", Indigofera tinctoria, but in a lower concentration. Following the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India by the navigator Vasco da Gama in 1498, great amounts of indigo were imported from Asia. Laws were passed in some parts of Europe to protect the woad industry from the competition of the indigo trade. It was proclaimed that indigo caused yarns to rot.[34] This prohibition was repeated in 1594 and again in 1603.[35] In France, Henry IV, in an edict of 1609, forbade under pain of death the use of "the false and pernicious Indian drug".[36]
With the development of a chemical process to synthesize the pigment, both the woad and natural indigo industries collapsed in the first years of the 20th century. The last commercial harvest of woad until recent times occurred in 1932, in Lincolnshire, Britain. Small amounts of woad are now grown in the UK and France to supply craft dyers.[37] The classic book about woad is The Woad Plant and its Dye[38] by J. B. Hurry, Oxford University Press of 1930, which contains an extensive bibliography.[39]
A method for producing blue dye from woad is described in The History of Woad and the Medieval Woad Vat (1998)
Woad is biodegradable and safe in the environment. In Germany, there have been attempts to use it to protect wood against decay without applying dangerous chemicals.
Invasive and noxious weed
In certain locations, the plant is classified as a non-native and invasive weed. It is listed as a noxious weed by the agriculture departments of several states in the western United States: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.[42][43] In Montana, it has been the target of an extensive, and largely successful, eradication attempt.[44]
Notes
- ^ Compare Pat Fish, quoted in Woad and its Mis-Association with Pictish Body Art: "[Woad] is also an amazing astringent. The tattoo I did with it literally burned itself to the surface, causing me to drag the poor experimented-upon fellow to my doctor who gave me a stern chastizing for using innappropriate [sic] ink. It produced quite a bit of scar tissue, but healed very quickly, and no blue was left behind. This leads me to think it may have been used for closing battle wounds. I believe the Celts used copper for blue tattoos, they had plenty of it, and soot ash cardon for black. Unfortunately we need more bog bodies to prove this point!"[21]
References
- ^ "Woad – Definition and More". Merriam Webster. Retrieved 3 February 2011.
- ^ Hegi, Gustav (1986). Illustrierte Flora von Mitteleuropa. Spermatophyta, Band IV Teil 1. Angiospermae, Dicotyledones 2. pp. 126–131.
- PMID 32121532.
- ^ "Natural Dyeing using Dyer's Woad". 13 December 2018.
- ^ G. Luzzatto - Notizie e documenti sulle arti della lana e della seta in Urbino "Le marche" VII 1907 p.p. 185-210
- ^ Delio Bischi - Convegno internazionale sul Guado, Erfurt (Turingia) 3-7 Giugno 1992, Estratto da Esercitazioni dell’Accademia Agraria di Pesaro Serie 3ᵃ – Volume 24°- Anno 1992
- ^ ISSN 1468-0092.
- PMID 17009279.
- .
- ^ Lucas, Alfred (1934). Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries (2nd ed.). London: E. Arnold & Company. p. 314.
- ISBN 9780852638002.
- ^ Talmud, b. Shabbat 68a
- ^ Talmud, b. Shabbat 79a
- ^ Talmud, b. Shabbat 90a
- ^ Talmud, b. Pesachim 56b
- ^ Talmud, b. Megillah 24b
- ^ Entry "vitrum", in: Michiel de Vaan (ed.), Etymological Dictionary of Latin (Ph. D. 2002). First published online at Brill, October 2010. Consulted online on 23 May 2019.
- ^ ISBN 9780812971422.
- ISSN 1468-0092.
- ^ Lambert, Saigh Kym (2004). "The Problem of the Woad". Dunsgathan.net. Retrieved 2012-10-09.
- ^ "Woad and it's mis-association with Pictish BodyArt". Modern Hengineering. Archived from the original on 2005-06-08. Retrieved 2014-11-13.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ISSN 1468-0092.
- ISBN 0-7141-2305-6.
- ISBN 978-0-19-211621-5.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-904982-15-9.
- ^ Chaucer, Geoffrey (1894). "The Former Age". In Skeat, Walter W. (ed.). The Complete Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer – via Bartleby.com.
- ISBN 978-1-86011-360-4.
- ^ "Keeping for sheep". Stamford Mercury. 13 November 1789.
- ^ "Shipping News". Stamford Mercury. 11 April 1788.
- ^ "Boston Ship News". Stamford Mercury. 6 April 1792.
- ^ Monger, Garry (2019). "Woad in the fens". The Fens & Surrounding. 12: 16.
- ^ Sombart, Werner (1928). Der moderne Kapitalismus (in German). Vol. 1 (15th ed.). München, Leipzig, Duncker & Humblot. p. 231.
- PMID 34397905.
- ^ "Sketches of India". Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science. Vol. 17, no. 100. April 1876 – via Project Gutenberg.
- ^ D G Schreber, Historische, physische und economische Beschreibung des Waidtes, 1752, the appendix; Thorpe JF and Ingold CK, 1923, Synthetic colouring matters - vat colours (London: Longmans, Green), p. 23
- ^ Foucaud, Édouard (1846). Frost, John (ed.). The book of illustrious mechanics. D. Appleton. p. 236.
- ^ Cooksey, Chris. "Indigo - woad". Chris Cooksey. Archived from the original on 2012-02-19. Retrieved 2012-10-09.
- Archive.org.
isbn 1973 reprint
- ^ "J B Hurry's woad bibliography". Chris Cooksey. Archived from the original on 2012-04-16. Retrieved 2012-10-09.
- ^ "Historic Dyes Series No. 1 - The History of Woad and the Medieval Woad Vat by John Edmonds". unknown. Archived from the original on 25 August 2010. Retrieved 28 January 2011.
- ^ EP patent 1223198A1, Hans-Martin Dr. Dahse; Klausjürgen Dr. Dornberger & Albrecht Feige et al., "Process for the development of an environmentally desirable raw material based on woad (isatis tinctoria L.)", issued 2004-02-25
- ^ "Plants Profile for Isatis tinctoria (Dyer's woad)". USDA Plants Database. USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
- ^ "Prohibited, Regulated and Restricted Noxious Weeds". Arizona Department of Agriculture. Archived from the original on November 23, 2009. Retrieved November 24, 2009.
- S2CID 55153477. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2011-01-04.
Sources
- Kaiser-Alexnat, Renate (2013). Wonder Woad: Experiences involving human and plant – especially woad – reported in pictures and stories. Berlin, DE: epubli GmbH. OCLC 923961362.
- Taylor, Colin (2018). Lauragais: Steeped in History, Soaked in Blood. Troubador Publishing. ISBN 978-1789015836.
External links
- Woad.org.uk - All About Woad - Cultivation, Extraction, Dyeing with Woad, History and facts about woad
- The Former Woad Industry Rex Wailes in Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 1935-36 Vol 16.
- USDA information on Isatis tinctoria