FAST AND FUGITIVE DYES.[1]

[Footnote 1: A paper recently read before the Society of Arts,
London.]

By Prof. J.J. HUMMEL.


As it is with many other arts, the origin of dyeing is shrouded in the
obscurity of the past; but no doubt it was with the desire to attract
his fellow that man first began to imitate the variety of color he saw
around him in nature, and colored his body or his dress.

Probably the first method of ornamenting textile fabrics was to stain
them with the juices of fruits, or the flowers, leaves, stems, and
roots of plants bruised with water, and we may reasonably assume that
the primitive colors thus obtained would lack durability.

By and by, however, it was found possible to render some of the dyes
more permanent, probably in the first instance by the application of
certain kinds of earth or mud, as we know to be practiced by the Maori
dyers of to-day, and in this way, as it appears to me, the early dyers
learnt the efficacy of what we now call "mordants," which I may
briefly describe as fixing agents for coloring matters.

At a very remote period therefore, I imagine, the subject of fast and
fugitive dyes engaged the attention of textile colorists.

Our European knowledge of dyeing seems to have come to us from the
East, and although at first indigenous dyestuffs were largely