Persian blue, pomegranate flower, spiny lobster, wine soup, pale flesh, dove breast, golden wax, grass green, green sand, rotten olive, modest plum, agate, rich French gray, gunpowder of the English...these are just some of the colour names of old fabric to fire the imagination. The Dyer's Handbook concerns a unique manuscript from the eighteenth century; a dyers memoirs from Languedoc, containing recipes for dyes with corresponding colour samples. It is an exceptional document, hugely rare and of great significance not only to textile historians but dyers and colourists today, as thanks to the information in the manuscript the colours can be reproduced exactly, with the same ingredients, or reproduced using modern techniques by matching the colour samples. To the English translation of the text, together with facsimile pages reproduced in colour from the original manuscript, are added essays meant to situate it in its historical, economic and technological contexts. For those historians who have long been fascinated by the change in scale and the amount of innovation that occurred in woollen cloth production in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, The Dyer's Handbook brings first-hand insight into the daily preoccupations and tasks of a key actor in the success story of the Languedocian broadcloth production specially devised for export to the Levant. Even non-specialists may be interested in understanding the clever management and technical organisation that made it possible for the author to produce, dye, finish, pack and export up to 1,375 pieces of superfine broadcloth per year, representing nearly 51 km of cloth.

About the Author
Dominique Cardon is Emerita Head of Research at CIHAM/ UMR 5648, CNRS (National Centre of Scientific Research) in Lyons, France. She was awarded the Silver Medal of CNRS in 2011. Her long pursued research themes are the history and archaeology of textile production and dyeing. She is the author of La Draperie au Moyen Age - Essor d'une grande industrie europeenne, Paris, 1999, and of several books on Natural Dyes, one of which received the "Art and Science of Colour Prize" of the L'Oreal Foundation in 2003. Scientific director of a series of International Symposiums/Workshops on Natural Dyes, in India, South Korea, Taiwan and France, she was awarded the UNESCO Medal "Thinking and Building Peace" in 2006 for this contribution.

Reviews
...the author of the memoirs emerges as a highly competent and innovative dyer, for he created new colourways, and managed a successful manufacturing business. His ability to record accurately his recipes in one place and that the manuscript was preserved until the time Cardon became acquainted with it and brought it to our attention is like finding treasure. * Journal of Dress History *



Book Information
ISBN 9781789255492
Author Dominique Cardon
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Oxbow Books
Publisher Oxbow Books