Inspired by reading The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel, we did a mini dive into the history of textile dyeing. We’ve heavily condensed the epically long story into a much more digestible version based on key discoveries in time, from the ancient Egyptians to the Industrial Age many say we’re still living in.
When humans first embarked on textile making, it was difficult, labor-intensive, and required expert craftsmanship. Woven textiles made from wool or linen were left in their undyed natural state, ranging from grayish to off-white. As the first civilizations in the Middle East, Asia, and Egypt were flourishing, the textile industry matured and craftspeople got more creative with colors. One of the earliest discoveries of red and orange dyes was found in Egyptian tombs dating to 2600 BC where hieroglyphs described the extraction and application of natural dyes. Color was useful in many textile applications, namely denoting class, status, and gender.
A hugely important discovery by the Phoenicians around 1200 BC yielded Tyrian purple, so named for its city of origin, Tyre. The long process included extracting the mucus of predatory Eastern Mediterranean sea snails, which resulted in the most brilliant purple dye. It was also the most expensive color in history for thousands of years due to the difficulty of production, and so rare that it was reserved for royalty which is why it’s also called royal purple. The purple textiles were described by historians as carrying the distinct odor of fish, urine, and sea, so having a noticeable stench was one way to flaunt your wealth. Cleopatra was reported to be a big fan of Tyrian purple: she dressed in it, decorated her royal barge and the walls of her palace with it, and even had sofas upholstered with the royal shade. During the Roman Empire, it was worth more than gold.
From Antiquity until the mid-19th century, people from all civilizations in all corners of the globe continued to continued to experiment with dyes made from plants, minerals, and insects, or animals. In the 1800s, “The Stockholm Papyrus” – a collection of 154 craft recipes for natural dye compiled in 300 AD and written in Greek – was discovered by a Greek merchant. Countless recipes were tested, but only about 12 were widely-used as the mixtures tended to be hard to replicate and natural dyes aren’t known for being stable. Successful recipes included cochineal from insects or madder plants to produce vibrant red, woad and indigo plants for blues, and minerals for ocher yellow. Not all experiments were great for humans though – Scheele’s green, wildly popular during the Victorian era, combined copper and arsenic to produce a deep emerald color as beautiful as it was deadly.
The late 19th and early 20th century were a wild time in the history of textile dye – a young English chemist discovered aniline dyes could be made from coal tar in 1856, resulting in eye-popping bright colors that were inexpensive to produce. He named the first synthetic dye Tyrian purple after the original, but it was changed to “mauve” when later marketing. Fuschia, aldehyde green, magenta, pinks, yellows and blue dyes quickly followed, making color acessible to the masses. For the first time in history, poor people from lower classes could wear color instead of being relegated to dingy brown or gray! Although modern trends overwhelmingly lean towards grays, neutrals, and earth tones, technological advances in synthetic dyes allow for amazing self-expression in the way we decorate ourselves and our homes.
Some of Regal’s joyfully colorful fabrics:
D-TOPSIDER TOMATO
R-MAP CASSIS
D-RECOVER UMBER
R-BLOCK TERRACOTTA
R-HARMONY LEMON
R-COSETTE SAFFRON
R-MARISOL GRASS
K-FINESSE EMERALD
R-ANNIE SKY
K-ANASTASIA CADET
K-GRETCHEN INDIGO
R-SIRI INDIGO
R-ESSENCE ELDERBERRY
R-KAI BERRY