| Title | Woad |
| Origtitle | Isatis tinctoria |
| Caption | Woad plants in their first year |
| Source | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Isatis_tinctoria02.JPG |
| Date | 2005 |
| URL | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Isatis_tinctoria02.JPG |
| Creator | Pethan |
| Type | Photograph |
| Copyright | 2005, Pethan |
| Origin | Internet |
| Notes | Hariot; p. 11 Apparently used in dying fabric, grows in Azores; lumped with Madder1 in discussion; 1The roots can be over a meter long, up to 12 mm thick and the source of a red dye known as rose madder. From Wikipedia.; ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isatis_tinctoria Woad plants in their first year; ; Woad (or glastum) is the common name of the flowering plant Isatis tinctoria in the family Brassicaceae. It is commonly called dyer's woad, and sometimes incorrectly listed as Isatis indigotica (a newer and invalid name for the same plant). It is occasionally known as Asp of Jerusalem. Woad is also the name of a blue dye produced from the plant. Woad is pronounced /'wo?d/, to rhyme with road.; Woad is native to the steppe and desert zones of the Caucasus, Central Asia to eastern Siberia and Western Asia (Hegi), but is now found in southeastern and some parts of Central Europe as well. It has been cultivated throughout Europe, especially in Western and southern Europe, since ancient times.; History of woad cultivation; The first archaeological finds of woad seeds date to the Neolithic and have been found in the French cave of l'Audoste, Bouches du Rhone (France). Named Färberwaid (Isatis tinctoria L.) or German Indigo of the plant family (Brassicaceae), in the Iron Age settlement of the Heuneburg, Germany, impressions of the seeds have been found on pottery. The Hallstatt burials of Hochdorf and Hohmichele contained textiles dyed with Färberwaid (dye woad).; Julius Caesar tells us (in De Bello Gallico) that the Britanni used to colour their bodies blue with vitrum, a word that roughly translates to "glass". While many have assumed vitrum or vitro refers to woad, and this misconception was probably repeated for political reasons,[2] it is probable that Caesar was describing some form of copper- or iron-based pigment.[2] The northern inhabitants of Britain came to be known as Picts (Picti), which means "painted ones" in Latin, and may have been due to these accounts of them painting or tattooing their bodies.; In Viking age levels at York, a dye shop with remains of both woad and madder dating from the tenth century have been excavated. In Medieval times, centres of woad–cultivation lay in Lincolnshire and Somerset in England, Gascogne, Normandy, the Somme Basin (from Amiens to Saint-Quentin), Toulouse and Britany in France, Jülich, the Erfurt area in Thuringia in Germany and Piedmont and Tuscany in Italy. A major market for woad was at Görlitz in Silesia.[3] The citizens of the five Thuringian Färberwaid (dye woad) towns of Erfurt, Gotha, Tennstedt, Arnstadt and Langensalza had their own charters. In Erfurt, the woad-traders gave the funds to found the University of Erfurt. Traditional fabric is still printed with woad in Thuringia, Saxony and Lusatia today: it is known as Blaudruck (literally, 'blue print(ing)').; Medieval uses of the dye were not limited to textiles. For example, the illustrator of the Lindisfarne Gospels used a woad-based pigment for blue paint.; The dye chemical extracted from woad is indigo, the same dye extracted from "true indigo", Indigofera tinctoria, but in a lower concentration. With the European discovery of the seaway to India, great amounts of indigo were imported. Laws were passed in some parts of Europe to protect the woad industry from the competition of the indigo trade. Indigo was proclaimed to rot the yarns as well. "In 1577 the German government officially prohibited the use of indigo, denouncing it as that pernicious, deceitful and corrosive substance, the Devil's dye." [4] "... a recess of the Diet held in 1577 prohibited the use of 'the newly-invented, deceitful, eating and corrosive dye called the devil's dye.' This prohibition was repeated in 1594 and again in 1603."[5] 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 twentieth century. The last commercial harvest of woad until recent times occurred in 1932, in Lincolnshire, Britain. Small amounts of woad are now grown in UK and France to supply craft dyers.[6] The classic book about woad is "The Woad Plant and its Dye" by J B Hurry, Oxford University Press, 1930, which contains an extensive bibliography.[7]; In Germany, there are attempts to use woad to protect wood against decay without dangerous chemicals. Production is also increasing again in the UK for use in inks, particularly for inkjet printers, and dyes, as woad is biodegradable and safe in the environment, unlike many synthetic inks. Isatis tinctoria is viewed as an invasive species in parts of the United States.; |
Either the plant Isatis tinctoria or the blue dye made using its leaves; less likely, wild woad (Reseda Lutcola). Very important for the 16th-century English economy, based on cloth-making.