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Abstract
The successful commercial introduction of the Turkey red textile dyeing process from Western and South Asia into Western Europe occurred via France in the mid 18th century. The French state was deeply involved in facilitating this technology transfer. During the later half of the century, French dyers from Rouen were involved in a further transfer of this process into Great Britain. In particular, the efforts of Scottish dyers to recruit and utilize the knowledge and skills of M. Papillon, the ambiguous role of the Scottish Board of Manufactures, and the assistance of Professors Black and Hope are described. The eventual success of such ventures resulted in the implementation of the Turkey red process industrially in Glasgow by 1785.
Appendix 1
TRUSTEES OFFICE,
FOR MANUFACTURES, & C.
Edinburgh, 24th November 1803.
The Commissioners and Trustees for Manufactures, &c. in Scotland, having, in the year 1790, paid a Premium to PIERRE JAQUES PAPILLON, a native of France, for communicating to Dr Black, then Professor of Chemistry, Edinburgh, the Process followed by him for DYEING COTTON YARN a FIXED TURKEY RED, on condition that it should remain a secret for a certain term of years, during which term Mr Papillon should have the sole benefit of his secret; and that term being now expired, the Trustees have ordered the communication, as originally made to Dr Black, to be published for the information of all concerned, as follows, viz.–––
RECEIPT
For DYEING COTTON YARN a DURABLE RED.
Step I
For One Hundred Pound Cotton you must have,
100 lb. of Alicante Barilla
20 lb. Pearl Ashes
100 lb. Quick Lime.
The Barilla is mixed with Soft Water in a deep tub, which has a small hole near the bottom of it, stopped at first with a peg. This hole is covered in the inside with a cloth supported by two bricks, that the ashes may be prevented from running out at it, or stopping it up while the ley filters through it.
Under this tub is another to receive the ley, and pure water is repeatedly passed through the first tub to form leys of different strength, which are kept separate at first, until their strength is examined. The strongest required for use must swim or float an egg, and is called the ley of six degrees of the French hydrometer, or peseliqueur. – The weaker are afterwards brought to this strength by passing them through fresh barilla; but a certain quantity of the weak, which is of two degrees of the above hydrometer, is reserved for dissolving the oil, and the gum, and the salt, which are used in subsequent parts of the process. This ley of two degrees is called the Weak Barilla liquor; the other is called the Strong.
Dissolve the Pearl Ashes in ten pails, of four gallons each, of soft water, and the lime in fourteen pails.
Let all the liquors stand till they become quite clear, and then mix ten pails of each.
Boil the Cotton in the mixture five hours, then wash it in running water and dry it.
Step II. Bainbie, or Grey Steep
Take a sufficient quantity (ten pails) of the strong barilla water in a tub, and dissolve or dilute in it two pails full of sheeps dung, then pour into it two quart bottles of oil of vitriol, and one pound of gum arabic, and one pound of Salammoniac, both previously dissolved in a sufficient quantity of the weak barilla water, and lastly 25 pound of olive oil, which has been previously dissolved or well mixed with two pails of the weak barilla water.
The materials of this steep being well mixed, tramp or tread down the cotton into it, until it is well soaked – let it steep 24 hours, and then wring it hard, and dry it.
Steep it again 24 hours, and again wring and dry it.
Steep it a third time 24 hours, after which wring and dry it, and lastly wash it well and dry it.
Step III. The White Steep
This part of the process is precisely the same with the last in every particular, except that the sheeps dung is omitted in the composition of the steep.
Step IV. Gall Steep
Boil 25 pound of galls, bruited in ten pails of river water, until four or five are boiled away; strain the liquor into a tub, and pour cold water on the galls in the strainer to wash out of them all their tincture.
As soon as the liquor is become milk warm, dip your Cotton hank by hank, handling it carefully all the time, and let it steep 24 hours.
Then wring it carefully and equally, and dry it well without washing.
Step V. First Alum Steep
Dissolve 25 pound of Roman alum in 14 pails of warm water without making it boil, skim the liquor well, and add two pails of strong barilla water, and then let it cool until it be luke warm.
Dip your cotton and handle it hank by hank, and let it steep 24 hours, and wring it equally, and dry it well without washing.
Step VI. Second Alum Steep
Is performed in every particular like the last, but af[ter] the cotton is dry you steep it six hours in the river, and wash it and dry it.
Step VII. Dyeing Steep
The cotton is dyed by about ten pound at once, for which take 2½ gallons of ox blood, and mix it in the copper with 28 pails of milk warm water, and stir it well; then add 25 pound of madder, and stir all well together. Then having before hand put the ten pound of cotton on sticks, dip it into the liquor, and move and turn it constantly one hour, during which you gradually increase the heat until the liquor begin to boil at the end of the hour. Then sink the cotton, and boil it gently one hour longer, and lastly wash it and dry it.
Take out so much of the boiling liquor, that what remains may produce a milk warm heat, with the fresh water with which the copper is again filled up, and then proceed to make up a dyeing liquor as above for the next ten pound of cotton.
Step VIII. The Fixing Steep
Mix equal parts of the grey steep liquor and of the white steep liquor, taking five or six pails of each. – Tread down the cotton into this mixture, and let it steep six hours, then wring it moderately and equally, and dry it without washing.
Step IX. Brighton Steep
10 lib. of white soap must be dissolved most carefully and completely in 16 or 18 pails of warm water; if any little bits of the soap remain undissolved, they will make spots in the Cotton. Add four pails of strong Barilla water, and stir it well. Sink your Cotton in this liquor, keeping it down with cross sticks, and cover it up and boil it gently two hours, then wash it and dry it, and it is finished.
Vessels
The number of vessels necessary for this business is greater in proportion to the extent of the manufactory; but, in the smallest work it is necessary to have four Coppers of a round form.
1st, The largest, for Boiling and for Finishing, is 28 inches deep, by 38 or 39 wide in the mouth, and 18 inches wider in the widest part.
2nd, The second for Dyeing, is 28 deep, by 32 or 34 in the mouth.
3rd, The third for the Alum Steep, is like the second.
4th, The fourth, for boiling the Galls, is 20 deep, by 28 wide.
A number of tubs or larger wooden vessels are necessary, which must all be of fir, and hooped with wood or with copper.
Iron must not be employed in their construction, not even a nail; but where nails are necessary, they must be of copper.
By the pail is always understood a wooden vessel, which holds four English gallons, and is hooped with copper.
In some parts of the above process, the strength of the Barilla liquor or liquors is determined, by telling to what degree a Peseliqueur or Hydrometer sinks in them.
The Peseliqueur was of French construction. It is similar to the glass hydrometer used by the spirit dealers in this country; and any artist who makes these instruments, will find no difficulty in constructing one with a scale similar to that employed by M. Papillon, when he is informed of the following circumstances:
1st, The instruments, when plunged in good soft water, such as Edinburgh pipe water, at temperature 60 deg. sinks to the 0. or beginning of the scale, which stands near the top of the stem.
2nd, When it is immersed in a saturated solution of common salt, at the same temperature of 60 deg. it sinks to the 26 degree of the scale only, and this falls at some distance from the top of the ball.
This saturated solution is made by boiling in pure water, refined sea or common salt, till no more is dissolved, and by filtering the liquor when cold through blotting paper.
It should also be observed, that whenever directions are given to dry yarn, to prepare it for a succeeding operation, that this dying should be performed with particular care, and more perfectly than our dryest weather is in general able to effect. It is done therefore in a room heated by a stovetoa great degree.
By Order of the Board of Trustees,
WILLIAM ARBUTHNOT, Sec.
(Edinburgh Evening Courant, 1st December, 1803, 1e.)
Appendix 2
A translation of works on dyeing by the three French chemists, Hellot, Macquer, and Le Pileur D'Apligny, was made by Hall (1789) and receipts or recipes for numerous dyes, including Turkey red, were given. A copy of this book found its way to the library of the Board of Manufactures in Edinburgh and it is now in the National Library of Scotland, where it is catalogued as Hall.195.g, but it is not certain whether they had received it in the year of publication. Here is the method Le Pileur d' Apligny gives for dyeing Turkey red:
Adrianople red
The reds of which I have been speaking are vulgarly called madder reds, though the reds I am going to descibe are equally obtained from a species of madder coming from the Levant. The latter however, commonly called Lizary, furnishes a dye incomparably finer than that produced by the best Zealand Adrianople Red, the second. The process of the latter I shall give in this place.
When you have a hundred pounds of cotton to dye, you put a hundred and fifty pounds of Alicant Soda, inclosed in clean linen, into a tub. This tub should be full of holes at the bottom, that the liquor may run into a [sic] another tub underneath. The hundred and fifty pounds of Soda being in the upper tub, is covered with three hyndred quarts of river water, measured by wooden pails containing each twenty-five quarts. The water that passes from the first tub into the second, is again poured over the Soda at different times, till it has extracted all the salt. This lixivium may be tryed with oil: if it uniformly whitens and that it mixes well with the oil without any appearance of separation at the surface, it is then sufficiently saturated with the salt. This lixivum may be tryed with a fresh egg as I have said above. You agin pour three hundred quarts of water over the Soda, contained in the superior tub, in order to extract the whole of the salt. Two similar lixiviums are afterwards made, each with the same quantity of water, as had fifty pound of fresh woodashes, and the other with seventy-five pounds of quick-lime. These three lixiviums being clarified, a hundred pounds of cotton are out into a tub, and watered with each of these lixiviums in equal proporation. When it has perfectly imbibed these salts, it is put into a copper full of water without being wrung, and boiled for three hours, it is afterwards taken out and washed in running water. This operation being finished the cotton is dryed in the air.
A quantity of the above-mentioned lixiviums is then poured into a tub in equal portions, so as to make four hundred quarts. In a part of this liquor, twenty-five pounds of sheeps dung with some of the intestine liquor is well diluted by means of a wooden pestle, and the whole strained through a hair sieve. Twelve pounds and a half of good olive oil poured into this mixture, when finished, instantly forms a soapy liquor. In this the cotton should be dipped, hank by hank, stirring every time, and with the same precautions I have already recommended in the aluming of cottons destined for the madder red. The cotton having remained twelve hours in this soapy water is then taken out, lightly wrung and dried; this operation is repeated three times. The liquor that runs from the cotton when wrung, falling again into the trough where the cotton was laid is called Sickiou, and should be kept for brightening.
When the cotton has been three times dipped in this soapy water, and afterwards dryed, it is again dipped three times in another composition, made in the same manner as the first, with four hundred quarts of lixivium, and twelve pounds and a half of oil, but without the sheeps dung; the remainder of this liquor is all preserved for brightening. The cotton having been dipped in this liquor three times, with the same precautions, and left in it the above-mentioned time, it is then carefully washed at the river to divest it entirely of the oil, without which the aluming would not take effect; having been washed, it should be as white as if it had been bleached.
When dry, you proceed in the aluming, which is done twice successively, but it is needless to givea detail of what has been sufficiently explained in the article upon madder red. It is enough in this place, to say, that the galls, about a quarter of a pound to every pound of cotton, should be pulverized; that six ounces of alum should be put to the first aluming; for the second four ounces, and at last, that an equal quantity of the lixivium be added to the alum water. We must also observe, that it were best to make an interval of three or four days between each aluming, and that no other astringent be added, all metallic salts being in general injurious to the beauty of the color.
Some days after the last aluming, you proceed to dyeing, in the same manner as above, only using two pounds of lizary in powder, for every pound of cotton, and before you dye, adding to the liquor about twenty pounds of liquid sheeps blood: it should be well struck into the liquor, which should be carefully skimmed.
In order to brighten the color, the cotton is dipped in a lixivium of fresh wood ashes, dissolving in it five pounds of the best white Marseilles soap, the water should be warm before the soap is put into it. In this mixture the hundred pounds of dyed cotton is immersed, and worked till it becomes perfectly penetrated. Six hundred quarts of water are then put into another copper, and when warm, the cotton without squeezing it out of the first, is put into the second, and boiled for three, four, five, or six hours, over a very slow fire, but as equal as possible, carefully covering the liquor to keep in the vapor, that none may escape but what passes through a funnel of small reeds.
Some pieces of the cotton are taken out from time to time, and when sufficiently revived and washed thoroughly, the red is perfect. The Cotton may be also brightened in the following manner: when washed and dryed immediately after dying it should be soaked in the Sickiou for an hour, well squeezed and also dried. When dry, you dissolve for every hundred pounds of cotton, five pounds of soap in a quantity of water sufficient to cover the cotton. When the water is warm, the cotton is immersed, and having well imbibed, is put into a copper with six hundred quarts of water; the whole is boiled very slowly during four or five hours, keeping the copper covered to prevent the steam from going off. This second method makes the red muchbrighterthan thefinest Adrianople Carnation.
Appendix 3. Selected bibliography concerning Turkey red, listed chronologically
Anon (1724) Secrets concernans les arts et métiers. Nouv. éd. rev., corr. & considé rablement augm. C. Ferrand, Rouen. 4 vols.
Lormois De (c 1769) Le Nouveau teinturier parfait, ou traité de ce qúil y a de plus essentiel dans la teinture, omis ou caché par l'auteur de l'ancien Teinturier parfait ... avec un dictionnaire des principaux ingrédiens, et des termes propres à l'art de teindre. Nouvelle ed. rev. et corr. C-A. Jombert, Paris.
Dambourney L-A (1786) Recueil de procédés et d'expériences sur les teintures solides que nos végétaux indigènes communiquent aux laines et aux lainages. Ph.D. Pierre, Paris.
Anon (1786) Report on Louis Borell's petition for a reward for discovering his method of dyeing the colour of Turkey red upon cotton hanks and in the piece. Dated 3rd April, 1786. House of Commons Journal, 1786, 41: 467–468. See also: 289 & 882.
Henry T (1790) Considerations relative to the nature of wool, silk, and cotton, as objects of the art of dying; on the various preparations, and mordants, requisite for these different substances; and on the nature and properties of colouring matter. Together with some observations on the theory of dying in general, and particularly the Turkey red. Mem. Manchester Lit. & Philos. Soc. 3: 343–408.
Chaptal JAC (1791) Elements of Chemistry. Translated from the French by W Nicolson. 3 vols. GGJ & J Robinson, London, Concerning the colouring principles. III: 140–160.
Bancroft E (1794) Experimental Researches Concerning the Philosophy of Permanent Colours, and the Best Means of Producing Them, by Dyeing, Calico Printing, &c. T. Cadell & W. Davies, London. New ed., London, 1813.
Papillon JP (1804) Account of the process followed by M. Pierre Jaques Papillon for dyeing Turkey red. Philos. Mag. 18: 43–47.
Vitalis J-B (1807) Programme d'un cours de teinture sur laine, fil & coton. P. Periaux, Rouen.
Vitalis J-B (1808) Essai sur l'origine et les progrés de l'art de la teinture en France, et particulièrement de l'art de teindre le coton en rouge dit des Indes. P. Periaux, Rouen.
Mackenzie P (1868) Reminiscences of Glasgow and the West of Scotland. J. Tweed, Glasgow, Vol. 3, chap. XXXIV, 417–431. ‘Turkey-red dyeing. The case of poor Peter James Papillon and his widow. Justice avenged.’
Chateau T (1876) Critical and historical notes concerning the production of Adrianople or Turkey red and the theory of this colour. Textile Colourist I, 172– 397; II, 27–200.
Hoey DG (1885) Reports to the creditors on the estate of William Miller and Sons, turkey-red dyers and calico printers at Springfield, Dalmarnock, and Glasgow. 2 volumes. n.p.
Lami EO, Tharel A (1881–1888) Dictionnaire encyclopedique et biographique de l'industrie. Librarie des dictionnaires de l'industrie, Paris. 8 vols.
Marwick WH (1924) The cotton industry and the industrial revolution in Scotland. Scot. Hist. Rev. 21: 207–218.
Turnbull G, Turnbull JG, Eds. (1951) A History of the Calico Printing Industry of Great Britain. J Sherratt, Altrincham, List of early works and papers relative to bleaching, printing, and dyeing, pp. 485–496. Bibliography pp. 497–501.
Clow A, Clow NL (1952) The Chemical Revolution. A Contribution to Social Technology. Batchworth Press, London.
Peel RA (1952) Turkey red dyeing in Scotland: its heyday and decline, J. Soc. Dyers Colour 68: 496– 505.
Partington JR (1961–1970) A History of Chemistry. Macmillan, London. 4 vols.: 1, Earliest period to A.D. 1500; 2, 1500–1700; 3, 1700–1800; 4, 1800 to the present time.
Swain MH (1965) Turkey red. Scots. Mag. March issue, pp. 536–541.
Gillispie CC, Ed. (1970–1980) Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Scribner, New York. 16 vols.
Hardie DWF (1972) The Macintoshes and the origins of the chemical industry. Chem. & Ind. June 1952, 606–613. Reprinted in: Musson, AE, Ed. Science, Technology, and Economic Growth in the Eighteenth Century. Methuen, London. pp. 168–194.
Tarrant NEA (1978) The collection of samples of the United Turkey Red Company in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. Bulletin de Liaison du Centre International d'étude des Textiles Anciens (CIETA). 47/ 48: 62–65.
Tarrant NEA (1987) The Turkey red dyeing industry in the Vale of Leven. In: Butt, J, Ponting, K, Eds., Scottish Textile History. Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen.