Dyeing with Natural Colorants

This paper explores the use of dyeing with natural dyes in research, as well as a tool for retaining normality of life in crisis situations. Nowadays craftsmanship skills, and especially traditional crafts can double as a research object and a research tool. Dyeing fabrics with natural dyes is a traditional crafts skill which entails a high potential for creativity, and which is still practised in Latvia today. In the past, this skill often became a creative way for retaining the quality of daily life during wars and other crisis situations. Nowadays natural dyeing is not only a means of creative self-expression through traditional crafts, but the process also helps to study the value of colours, through understanding the complexity or simplicity of obtaining a particular colour, as well as the resulting colour palette, etc. The author of this paper has used her dyeing skills in researching various ethnographic sources from the 18th – 20th centuries. Dyeing experiments help to adequately assess descriptions of fabric colours in written sources from various historical periods, and to interpret historical guides about ancient dyeing techniques and methods

Biology · Composite material · Dyeing · Natural (archaeology · Natural dye · Dyeing and Modifying Textile Fibers · Materials Science