RomanArmyTalk

Does anyone know the range of colours the Romans could dye into leather? I know that red was possible but how about other colours such as green, blue, pink, and yellow?
This question really has its origins in the fact that I have both deep blue and bright pink leather at home and wonder if I can use it for kit items, but it also reflects the fact that it's something we have probably discussed for too seldom, considering how much leather goes into a full set of kit.

Crispvs

Not a colour you mentioned Crispus, but I dyed Caballo's Baldric black in a bath of water and iron.

The iron turns the water black and the vegetable-tanned leather absorbs the dye. It also darkens on contact with the air. IT takes a good soak for about three days to get a deep colour, but the result is colour-fast.

I would have thought the same dyes used for fabric such as woad, weld, madder etc would also work on leather too. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong here no doubt!

Try this thread:
link from old RAT

Carlton Bach confirms in that thread that fabric dyes essentially work on leather.

This is something I'm wondering about too. I know most of the vegetal dyes that work on wool and linen also work on leather. I was told that the mordating should be a little bit more intensive for leather than with regular fabric dyeing.
I think however that the mordating should be done cold with leather (not in a pot on the fire). If you do it too hot the leather will shrivel and become hard (I noticed this yesterday, long before the water reached boiling point the leather shrank and turned black, luckily it was a scrap piece).

Can someone give us some more information about leather dyeing?

A pink colour can be reached very easily with several plants. It can be done with madder (Rubia tinctorum ) for an orangy pink, with red cabbage, red beet etc...

For a blue colour woad would have been the cheapest option. I don't know if indigo was used but if it was it was probaly too expensive for regular use...

A question I have is the following: just how much of their leather items did the Romans dye? More items dyed than not or the other way round?
Would things like seg straps have been dyed? Or the lacing for a seg? Questions, questions.........

Valete,

One thing that we DO know about the Romans is that they LOVED colour!

If it could be painted or dyed, it probably would have been!

But for example all shieldcover fragments ever found were undyed? :? Or not?

Rome lasted a very long time and there certainly were fashionable trends during it's long history, even to the point where 'oldies' comment on the fashion of youths (things never change). Surely it depended on the period and what was the fashion of the time. If it was available, which it undoubtedly was, it must have been done. But, perhaps thirty years later it was the trend to go for the natural look? Given the trends in other military metal finds, especially belts, I don't see why coloured leather is unfeasable.

I had a look at a Vindolanda report on the leather finds by Carol van Driel Murray, but couldn't find references to colour. I've definitely been told there are lots of finds of coloured leather, hence the RME2 illustration of the Dacian legionary having a red balteus and baldric, and white scabbard.

Regarding shield covers, I have often seen it pointed out that the reason most Roman leather appears to be the same shade of brown is that the tannins in the peat which has preserved it have permanently stained it that colour. Now I think about it, in a paper Carol van Driel-Murray presented at the RoMEC conference in 1999 about the material recovered from the Qasr Ibrim site in Egypt, I believe she mentioned pieces of leather which appeared similar to shield cover appliques from Holland but which were dyed pink and yellow. Unfortunately I have never seen this paper in print so I cannot easily check the information.

Regarding fabric dys on leather, do we know how dark a shade they could produce without the use of indigo?

Crispvs

"I dyed Caballo's Baldric black in a bath of water and iron. " And a damn fine colour it is too!
It also seems to be more robust than my scabbard.....now repaired after Colchester!

Quote:Regarding fabric dyes on leather, do we know how dark a shade they could produce without the use of indigo?

Certainly if dipped more than once, woad will produce deep blues. It is light reactive, so when, after dying it is exposed to sunlight, the colour deepens. (It's actually still yellow/green when it emerges from the dyebath).

It would probably work the same with veggie-tanned leather. Also, if iron was also used in the dyebath it will certainly deepen the colour to a dark navy blue.

So if the brown colour of most leather finds is caused by the tannin in the sediment they were preserved in it is very well possible that calligae and such were also dyed in a nice colour...

Is it possible to detect dyestuff on the leather finds by chemical analyses? Or would every trace have been erased?

This is a bit like all mammoths (and other ice age animals like the woolyrhinoceros etc) being depicted as having red hair. The pigment has vanished over the years they were frozen in the ice and hair without pigment is red...

I have heard that this is the tradtional leather for Roman shield covers.

Hmm. Not only a useful source on this side of the pond, but the chart in the middle is interesting too.

KIMBERLEY-JANE

Quote:MADDER - no mordant - pink tan

Quote:The iron turns the water black and the vegetable-tanned leather absorbs the dye. It also darkens on contact with the air. IT takes a good soak for about three days to get a deep colour, but the result is colour-fast.

Peroni, if you just want to blacken leather, you should try a similar method: fill a jar with strong vinegar, add a teaspoon of iron powder or iron sawdust, wait for a few days, and if you then smear only a small amount of this liquid on to wet vegetable tanned leather with a spongue or a paintbrush, the leather turns into a deep black within less than a minute! Might save you some time :wink:

Yes, it's waterproof (our boots get dyed with this method)

The Romans certainly had a lot of methods for getting colour into leather ('pimp my tegimentum' :lol: ), but according to a friend of mine (a leather archaeologist), for vegetable tanned leather only black, red (madder) and yellow are possible.
(Has anybody of the boys here ever tried woad on veggy leather???)

However, alum tanned leather can probably be dyed with various kinds of dyestuffs - but it is more susceptible to slow erosion than vegetable tanned leather, so there are far fewer fragments left.