dyeing linen

[Graham Sumner]

Hi John

Considering this thread is about dyeing linen, I am not sure what your photo is meant to prove but you are illustrating it as some kind of Eureka moment. nonetheless I think it would be pretty difficult to tell what the material is from a mosaic.

Matthew wrote

The tunic looks green

That was not what I thought but that could be due to the reproduction. However if it is a green tunic and if the scene is taken from a hunting mosaic and if it is a soldier depicted then that is of interest. Green for clothing rarely shows up in any Roman pictorial evidence or archaeologically for that matter however when it does appear in a military context it is usually only in Guard scenes, horse saddlecloths or, wait for it.... in hunting scenes. There is a mention of 'hunting dress' and green would be a logical colour for that.

All the military documents found in Egypt ordering clothing for the military from local weavers specify wool.

The above mosaic is from La Chebba in North Africa and is a detail from a mosaic called 'Neptune and the seasons' so the figure is presumably an agricultural labourer. It is of interest that two other workers are shown in tunics hitched up at the waist and with a knot visible behind the neck. One could argue I suppose that they are all military veterans!

Graham.

[John M McDermott]

Graham Sumner wrote:

Hi John

Considering this thread is about dyeing linen, I am not sure what your photo is meant to prove but you are illustrating it as some kind of Eureka moment. nonetheless I think it would be pretty difficult to tell what the material is from a mosaic.

The discusson wandered to other stuff besides linen and seemed to encompass the subject of color on all military clothing. A Eureka moment? No, I see it as more of a moment when rigid thinking takes a delightful poke in the ribs-not that I am accusing you of this.

[Cheyenne]

What period are these tunics?

Late 4th to early 6th century - mostly mid 5th century for the more complete ones

Cheers

[Graham Sumner]

Here is a link to the whole mosaic which is in Tunisia.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _Tunis.jpg

A Eureka moment? No, I see it as more of a moment when rigid thinking takes a delightful poke in the ribs-not that I am accusing you of this.

Me rigid thinking? Ha, you have seen my work haven't you? I am delighted for more evidence on which to base things. A green tunic in a hunting scene would fit in nicely with what I have already and to which I have already discussed in RMD. Nonetheless I think in this case we have an agricultural scene. Now if you had shown a green tunic worn by a soldier in armour in a battle scene that would on the other hand screw things up good and proper and would certainly be a poke in the ribs. However that might mean another book

Still a worker in a green tunic with a red cloak and a pet boar needs some explanation!

Graham.

[John M McDermott]

Still a worker in a green tunic with a red cloak and a pet boar needs some explanation!
Graham.

Well, I am tempted to say this guy is more than a worker. He wears what appears to be a sagum. I thought sagums were a military item of clothing not worn by civilians. Certainly, he cannot be a slave with clavii?

John

[Marcus Mummius]

Certainly, he cannot be a slave with clavii?

John

Why couldn't he be?

These look like slaves in clavi to me:



mosaic of slaves serving at a banquet Roman, from Carthage; third century CE
Paris, Louvre Museum. Credits: Barbara McManus, 1999

Source: http://www.vroma.org/images/mcmanus_images/index6.html

[Marcus Mummius]

I don't remember the source of this one, but I remember seeing it in several books:

[Graham Sumner]

He wears what appears to be a sagum. I thought sagums were a military item of clothing not worn by civilians. Certainly, he cannot be a slave with clavii?

Now who is being rigid!

A sagum is simply a rectangular cloak of which there are many types with many different names. It is very hard to distinguish them by artistic representations alone. The paenula cloak is worn by many military types but is also seen worn by civilians, The tunic worn hitched up at the waist is also seen worn by civilian workers as is the tunic with clavi. Servants (slaves) pouring drinks, serving food etc..wear tunics with clavi.

Poor people and poor slaves possibly did not wear anything better than rags.

A green tunic is rare and with an orange red cloak that might suggest some wealth perhaps on the owner of the estate represented in the mosaic who provided the clothes for his workers. On the other hand It could be a veteran or someone else. It is also common to suggest that the artist does not know what he is talking about! :wink:

Graham

[Doc]

Graham,

As you know, based on some left over pigments, a reconstruction was done using what is thought to be the colors on the Prima Porta statue.

The same was done with the centurion Marcus Caelius (website: www.livius.org ). According to that reconstruction the tunic is green. Now would you consider this to be a "wrong" reconstruction, wishful thinking?

[Graham Sumner]

The same was done with the centurion Marcus Caelius (website: http://www.livius.org ). According to that reconstruction the tunic is green. Now would you consider this to be a "wrong" reconstruction, wishful thinking?

With regards to the tombstone my opinion may be clouded by another example of a reconstructed coloured tombstone displayed in a museum. This shows an Optio coloured in a blue tunic with a brown cloak. This has been taken as 'evidence' of tunic colours and posted as such on a website. Unfortunately I know for a fact that in this particular case the colours were simply made up by the museum staff for presentation, on the grounds that Roman tombstones would have been coloured.

I can not be certain but I believe in the example you refer to above, the colours for the reconstruction were based on those discovered on the tombstone of Silius preserved in a watercolour painting made at the time of discovery (see M. Junkelmann 1992). This showed the cavalryman's attendant dressed like an auxiliary from Trajan's column but with his mail shirt/leather jerkin whatever, coloured green and with a red cloak.

However I could be wrong and the example you mention may indeed have been based on original paint surviving on the monument. The versions I have seen do not mention what the reconstruction is based on. If it is based on original paint from this monument then in that case we have a senior officer wearing what is considered to be by textile experts a rare and expensive colour. By shade of green I mean a very pale green effect might be achieved by single dyeing but the darker greens which is what you see in these cases and in this example would appear to have been at least double dyed and therefore more expensive. This is certainly something I would include in future editions of RMD but I would want more verification than the fact that it appears in a museum or on a website first.

Getting back to Augustus and the green in his reconstruction, that is also the colour of the cuirass in the famous Nile Palestrina mosaic worn by a figure identified as Octavian-Augustus (For a reconstruction see Imperial Roman Naval Forces by R, D'Amato Osprey 2009.)

D'Amato also shows another example of a reconstructed tombstone of one more centurion in his 'Arms and Armour of the Imperial Roman Soldier' 2009. Fig 302 shows Lucius Valerius Albinus from Cohors I Thracum dressed in red paenula and green tunic but D'Amato says the reconstruction was based on that of Silius. Which is why I did not include it as 'evidence' myself in my RMD.

A reconstruction of M. Caelius also appears in Arms and Armour. It was made in the 1880's by Hottenroth and showed the tunic as white with a brown cuirass. D'Amato always believed Hottenroth based his coloured reconstructions on surviving paint since lost but on what he based this on I do not know.

Graham.

[Doc]

It would be interesting to see if in reality the green is just another random choice or based on evidence found on the stela.

Maybe Jona has some input.

[Lepidina]

However I could be wrong and the example you mention may indeed have been based on original paint surviving on the monument. The versions I have seen do not mention what the reconstruction is based on. If it is based on original paint from this monument then in that case we have a senior officer wearing what is considered to be by textile experts a rare and expensive colour. By shade of green I mean a very pale green effect might be achieved by single dyeing but the darker greens which is what you see in these cases and in this example would appear to have been at least double dyed and therefore more expensive. This is certainly something I would include in future editions of RMD but I would want more verification than the fact that it appears in a museum or on a website first.

By more expensive, is there primary source evidence for this like sales receipts or inventory lists either for purchase of the garments or purchase of the dye stuffs? Or are people assuming that it is more expensive because it might take 2 dye baths? Some dye stuffs require multiple baths through mordanting and dyeing so double dipping to get a certain color is not that much more effort in the grand scheme of things. I doubt it would increase the price so it was out of the range of the average person. It might be just expensive enough to not be used as every day clothing or certainly work clothing, which is why you don't see it that often.

Or is green paint hard to do and that's why you don't see it painted very often? Just throwing out some ideas there.

[Graham Sumner]

By more expensive, is there primary source evidence for this like sales receipts or inventory lists either for purchase of the garments or purchase of the dye stuffs? Or are people assuming that it is more expensive because it might take 2 dye baths? Some dye stuffs require multiple baths through mordanting and dyeing so double dipping to get a certain color is not that much more effort in the grand scheme of things. I doubt it would increase the price so it was out of the range of the average person. It might be just expensive enough to not be used as every day clothing or certainly work clothing, which is why you don't see it that often.

Or is green paint hard to do and that's why you don't see it painted very often? Just throwing out some ideas there.

Hi Deb

At the moment I only have to hand an English translation of the Price Edict of Diocletian which does grade garments by weight, quality, dyeing and decoration but not all the prices survive. Colours other than purple do not appear to be mentioned and dyeing once or twice is recorded in that instance. To get the sort of direct information required for this would need a lot of research of the written finds. I will ask around to see if anything like this has already been done or is in progress.

While double dipping might not be too much of an effort, I wonder if someone was doing it as a business they would think the same? A lot of textile finds are not dyed at all. Judging from the Egyptian portraits wealthy men seemed to wear whitened garments while women went for colours in the purple, red, blue, range. Many of the beige off white colours seen in Roman art could easily be un-dyed wool, while the yellow brown cloaks so popular amongst the military would also appear to be un-dyed.

Green colours for clothing do not appear all that often in mosaics either, although ironically a model of a wool bale found in Scotland was coloured green.

Graham.

[Lepidina]

At the moment I only have to hand an English translation of the Price Edict of Diocletian which does grade garments by weight, quality, dyeing and decoration but not all the prices survive. Colours other than purple do not appear to be mentioned and dyeing once or twice is recorded in that instance. To get the sort of direct information required for this would need a lot of research of the written finds. I will ask around to see if anything like this has already been done or is in progress.

While double dipping might not be too much of an effort, I wonder if someone was doing it as a business they would think the same? A lot of textile finds are not dyed at all. Judging from the Egyptian portraits wealthy men seemed to wear whitened garments while women went for colours in the purple, red, blue, range. Many of the beige off white colours seen in Roman art could easily be un-dyed wool, while the yellow brown cloaks so popular amongst the military would also appear to be un-dyed.

The wealthy tend to wear white to show off that they don't have to work. Lower classes tend to wear colors, esp. darker colors because it doesn't show the dirt. (Massive generalization here mind you.) Women are peacocks so they wear whatever is in vogue at the moment.

As for as a business model, there are so many steps in the textile manufacturing that a second dip isn't that much extra work in the grand scheme of things. Plus there were home dyers as well so someone could buy a yellow or blue tunic and overdye it with something else at home to make green or overdye it when the original color starts to fade. Even though everything in the cloth trade is being done by hand, it is still a highly industrialized process. There was even a second hand clothing trade so plenty of stuff to keep dyers in business and a demand to have a variety of colors.

Green colours for clothing do not appear all that often in mosaics either, although ironically a model of a wool bale found in Scotland was coloured green.

I was talking to one of my natural dye friends today about the lack of green in Roman clothing and she mentioned that green tends to fade in art. Sometimes you'll see blue grass in paintings and tapestries because it has faded. So it could be that some of the blue tunics we are seeing in art were once green and have just faded. It's hard to know without a thorough pigment analysis.

[Crispvs]

Graham,

The optio you mentioned wouldn't be Caecilius Avitius and the museum wouldn't be the Grosvenor by any chance would it? I have often wondered about the reconstruction there but never got around to writing to the museum to ask if the blue was based on any sort of analysis of the original stone.

On the matter of undyed tunics, just to play around with an idea which has not been mentioned much on this thread so far, sheep come in a variety of shades and so undyed wool could be of a number of shades.
I grew up in rural New Zealand and whilst the majority of the sheep farmed in New Zealand are white Merino, Romney-Perrindale, Corriadale or Suffolk types, in the township I spent most of my childhood in, a number of older people still kept a few sheep of their own and these sheep were often various shades of black, grey or brown. I knew at least one woman who kept the wool from her sheep in separate bags so as not to mix up the shades and when she had enough of any one shade she would then spin it into a ball of woollen yarn. Like most women her age, she did a fair amount of knitting and when knitting with her own wool she would deliberately use the different shades of wool to make patterns in the garments she was making. Thus she could produce knitted woollen cloth with designs in several shades without having to resort to dyed wool.
In a similar way, I have a long sleeved tunic which I wear under my blue tunic in cold weather. As you can see from this picture (sorry about the poor light), it is hardly plain. Although in the case of fabric I made this tunic from I assume chemical dyes have been used, very few of the threads in it are of shades which could not be found naturally. Therefore I present this as an example of what could be considered to be an undyed tunic, from the point of view of cloth fragments found with no traces of dye.


Sorry to drag this a little OT.

Crispvs