“Remember the green silk skirt, and love the grass everywhere.” This is a classic phrase in the famous article “Shengchazi, Spring Mountain Smoke Wants to Harvest”. Just because the person I miss is wearing a green skirt, I love the house and the crow, and I also pity the green grass that can be seen everywhere.
So the question is, what is the haunting green skirt made of?
plantDye: from largenatureof the dyer
The earliest dyeing raw materials obtained by mankind came from nature, mainly including mineral dyes,animalThree categories of dyes and plant dyes. As early as the Neolithic Age, our country’s ancestors began to use hematite powder to dye red, but in the later continuous exploration, they found that the coloring effect and firmness of plant dyeing were better, and had obvious advantages. After repeated practice, they developed a set of dyeing skills using plant dyes, so plant dyes gradually replaced mineral and animal dyes and were widely used by people.
People extract natural pigments from the roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, bark and other parts of plants to make dyeing liquids, and dye them into corresponding patterns and colors according to their own needs. Plant dyeing is in our countryhistoryThe ancients divided the colors into positive colors and intermediate colors, which refer to the three primary colors of red, yellow and blue and the polar colors of black and white, and the rest of the colors are intercolored. Except for white, other colors are mainly obtained by vegetable dyes. There are not many plants that dye various intercolored colors alone, and usually use three primary colors to counterdye. For example, the haunting green silk skirt is dyed in yellow and blue.
Red, yellow, blue, and black go into battle together, who dances in the air with colorful ribbons?
(1) Red system
The red system includes red, vermilion, crimson, madder, red and other colors. There are many plants dyed red, among which the most widely used are madder, safflower and sorrel. In terms of the saturation and firmness of the dyed color, safflower is the highest, madder is second, and sumerum is the lowest, which just meets people’s demand for a variety of reds.
madder
Rubia cordifolia L. is a grassy climbing vine of the genus Rubia in the Rubiaceae family, which is suitable for planting in most areas of our country. The fibrous roots on its rhizomes and nodes contain alizarin and can dye red. Madder is the earliest red plant dye used in our country, and is called “Ru Zhi” in the Book of Songs. According to the “Han Official Ceremony”: “The dyeing garden produces gardenia for dyeing imperial clothes, which is where it is.” This shows the importance of madder as a dyeing plant.
When the ancients used madder to dye red, they would add alum as a mordant, so that the color was bright and had good washability. The crimson silk and longevity embroidered robe background color unearthed from Tomb No. 1 of Mawangdui in Changsha are dyed with madder added to alum.
Madder is easy to plant, and can be harvested in spring and autumn, can be used in all seasons after drying and storage, and at the same time, dyeing is convenient, easy to operate, and the dyeing materials are diverse, which is a commonly used red dye plant by the ancients.
Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.), also known as red and blue flower, is an annual herb of the genus Safflower in the Asteraceae family. Its stem is erect, the leaves in the middle and lower part of the stem are serrated, and the top of the teeth is pinched; The yellow flowers gather into a flower head and slowly turn red; achenes are milky white and can be squeezed into oil.
The ancients used safflower to dye directly, especially in the early stage of its petals, with a relatively high pigment content, which can be used as both food coloring and dip dyeing fabrics.
Safflower contains two pigments, red and yellow, and yellow pigment is soluble inwaterand acidic solutions, which have no dye value but have medicinal value; Red pigment is easily soluble in alkaline solutions and insoluble in acidic solutions, and will form a red precipitate in neutral or weakly acidic solutions. Use an alkaline solution to extract the red pigment in the safflower, and then add an excess acidic solution to neutralize it, so that the red pigment precipitates, and repeat the operation many times to twist the precipitated red pigment into small cakes, which is the rouge used by the ancients.
Red flowers in full bloom
Thinking about it this way, perhaps it is precisely because rouge in ancient times that it was made of plants that Jia Baoyu had the joy of eating rouge.
When used as a red dye, the yellow pigment in the safflower needs to be separated, so that the dyed color is more vivid, and Jia Sixie recorded this “flower killing method” in detail in “Qi Min Yaoshu”. In order to facilitate storage and transportation, the ancients made safflower into “safflower cake”, which can be dyed by simply frying it with plum water and then clarifying it with alkaline water or straw ash many times. Song Yingxing of the Ming Dynasty also recorded in “Tiangong Kaiwu” the method of preventing mildew in safflower cake and configuring different concentrations of dyes. It can be seen that the ancients have mastered a fairly superb dyeing process.
Su Mu (Caesalpinia sappan L.), also known as Su Fang, Su Fang Mu, Su Fang, is a small tree of the genus Yun Shi in the Fabaceae family, and its branches have sparse thorns; The leaves are bipinnate compound leaves, pinnate leaves opposite, leafletspaperQuality; The flowers are gathered in panicles, the petals are yellow when blooming, and the top part is pink at the base, which is particularly conspicuous; stamens slightly protruding, the lower part of the filament is covered with dense pubescence, the style is slender, hairy, and the stigma is truncated; The fruit is a non-cracking reddish-brown woody pod with a curved hard sharp corner, likebirdthe mouth of the child; The seeds are oblong and light brown.
Wood of Sumu
our country has used Sumu as a red dye for a long time, and ancient books such as “Southern Grass and Trees” in the Jin Dynasty and “Multi-Functional Affairs” and “Tiangong Kaiwu” in the Ming Dynasty have records of Sumu. Remove the outer skin and sapwood of the sorrel wood, take the heartwood, and dry it in the shade and can be used for dyeing. The heartwood contains hematoxylin, and with the addition of different mordants, it can obtain a variety of colors such as red, crimson to grape purple, and has always been an important raw material used by the ancients for dyeing.
(2) Yellow system
“Heaven and earth are yellow”, in ancient times, yellow was considered the color of the earth, and it was also the color of the costumes of emperors and queens. In ancient times, there were many plants used for dyeing yellow, mainly gardenias, Tuohuang, etc.
Gardenia (Gardenia jasminoides Ellis), also known as water horizontal branch and mountain yellow branch, is an evergreen shrub of the genus Gardenia in the Rubiaceae family. Its flowers are fragrant, usually a single flower grows on the top of the branch; The fruit is yellow or orange-red with wing-like longitudinal ridges. Gardenia fruit contains gardenia yellow pigment, which can be used to make yellow dye. According to the “Flora of China”, gardenia is widely distributed, and in different growth environments, gardenia will produce variations, which can be mainly divided into two types: one type is commonly called “mountain gardenia”, which is ovoid or nearly spherical, smaller, and more suitable for medicinal purposes; The other type is commonly called “water gardenia”, the fruit is oval or oblong, larger, and more suitable for dyeing.
Gardenia fruit
Since the Western Zhou Dynasty, gardenia has become the main material for dyeing yellow. After soaking and boiling, ripe fruits can be directly dyed with bright yellow, which can be used as a natural food coloring additive or textiles. Mordants can also be added to it to dye yellow with different shades such as tender yellow and dark yellow.
The “golden embroidery thread and earthy yellow silk fabric” unearthed from the Han tomb No. 1 in Mawangdui, Changsha, are dyed from gardenia. But although the color it dyes is good, it does not tolerate sun exposure.
Maclura tricuspidata carriere, also known as maclura tricuspidata carriere, is a deciduous shrub or small tree of the genus Maclura in the mulberry family. Its dioecious, male and female inflorescences are spherical flower heads; The fruit is a fleshy spherical polyflora, orange-red when ripe. The wood of Takuki is yellow, and the dyed color is reddish-yellow, which is called Takuhuang.
The branches of the zhe tree
The fabric dyed by Takuki is yellow with redlight, the color is dazzling. Since the Sui and Tang dynasties, yellow has been the color of imperial clothing. The “Tang Liudian” records: “Emperor Wen of Sui wore a yellow robe and a scarf belt to listen to the court.” During the reign of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, it was stipulated that “Jinshi shall not use red and yellow as clothing and miscellaneous decorations”. The Ming Dynasty explicitly prohibited courtiers and people from wearing yellow clothes, including turmeric, willow yellow and other yellow colors. In the Qing Dynasty, bright yellow became the special color of imperial clothing.
(3) Blue system
“Green is better than blue”, blue and blue, both come from bluegrass. “Tsing Yi Blue Cloth” is the color of the clothes worn by civilians in our country in ancient times, so the demand for blue dye was particularly large in ancient times. Bluegrass does not refer to a specific plant, but to a collective term. Bluegrass can dye blue because it contains indigo. Indigo dyeing uses reduction oxidation technology, which has been used since the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. According to the different dyeing time, number and concentration of dyeing solution, different shades of blue can be dyed, including light blue, sky blue, dark blue, cyan and other colors. The bluegrass used in ancient times mainly includes horse blue, smartweed blue, etc.
According to the “Flora of China” and “Flora of Hainan”, the horse blue in ancient books is the “Banlan” (Strobilanthes cusia (Nees) Kuntze) that we know today, which is a herbaceous plant of the genus Strobilanthes cusia (Nees) Kuntze, which bears fruit at one time for many years. Its stems are slightly lignified, erect or outward at the base; purple flowers gathered in spikes; The dried root is the medicinal material Banlan root, also known as Nanbanlan root. Because horse blue leaves contain indigo, horse blue was used for indigo dyeing in our country in ancient times, and it is also the most widely used blue indigo dye at present.
Plate blue leaves
Polygonum tinctorium Ait. is an annual herb of the genus Polygonum in the Polygonaceae family. Its stems are erect, usually branched; leaves ovate, dark blue-green after drying; The reddish flowers gather in spikes. In our country, smartweed has been planted in the Xia Dynasty and is familiar with its growth habits. Indigo dyeing is due to the presence of cyanosides in its leaves, from which indigo can be extracted.
smartweed blue leaves
At first, the ancients would only use fresh bluegrass to dye fabrics after soaking them directly in water, and the dyed color was blue or blue, not cyan. After continuous exploration and practice, the ancestors pioneered the indigo manufacturing technology, which can not only dye cyan, but also break the seasonal restrictions, making the bluegrass dyeing method feasible in all seasons, which greatly facilitates the transportation and storage of dyes.
(4) Black system
In different dynasties in ancient our country, black occupied different positions. The Qin Dynasty was still black, and black was considered superior from clothes to banners and banners. During the Wei and Jin dynasties, black was also the dominance, and the aristocracy of the capital Jiankang (now Nanjing, Jiangsu) at that time was known for wearing black. The Wuyi Alley in the Tang Dynasty poet Liu Yuxi’s “Sunset at the Entrance of Wuyi Alley” is named after the noble children living in this alley who love to wear black clothes (that is, black silk clothes). For most of the period after that, black was used as the color of clothing for the people, also known as “soap clothes”.
gallnut
The plants used by the ancients to dye black mainly include soap buckets, galluplets, black oaks, etc., of which soap buckets refer to the fruits of plants of the shell bucket family; The quinquet is a sumac familysaltGalls form on the young branches and leaves of trees of the genus Skinwood. The stained area often contains tannins, also known as tannins. Tanning is acted as a mordant and can dye plants black.
Due to the relatively poor firmness and depth of color when dyeing textiles with vegetable dyes, vegetable dyes have gradually withdrawn from the market stage. Nowadays, with the development of society, the concept of ecology, nature and environmental protection has gradually taken root in the hearts of the people, and human beings have used modern scientific and technological means to optimize the dye extraction and dyeing process by fiber pretreatment, ultrasonic vibration method, non-metallic mordant method and other methodslifeThe environment has become better.
