In ancient times, the pigments used were not only from plants; Also from minerals, the space is too long, only talking about the plant part. There are many kinds of plant dyes used in ancient China, which are classified according to chemical properties and dyeing methods, including direct dyes, basic dyes, mordant dyes and redox dyes. Direct dyes and basic dyes Gardenia jasminoides Ellis are the most widely used direct dyes in ancient Central Plains. There are records of "thousands of acres of flowers" in Historical Records, ... all of them are like thousands of families ",which shows that gardenia dyeing was very popular in Qin and Han Dynasties. The main component of Gardenia jasminoides Ellis is geniposide, which is a yellow pigment. It can be directly dyed on natural fibers or directly dyed on silk after boiling. Mordant ~ madder is one of the earliest mordant plant dyes in ancient Chinese written records. The Book of Songs once described the cultivation of madder and talked about clothes dyed with madder. Using mordant to form insoluble lake and fix it on fiber has good washing resistance. The background colors of crimson silk and longevity embroidered robes unearthed from the No.1 Han Tomb in Mawangdui, Changsha, were all dyed with alizarin and mordants containing aluminum and calcium. In addition to madder, there is also sapanwood recorded in Tang Materia Medica, which is also the main mordant in ancient times. This kind of arbor wood, which is rich in ancient China and Guangdong and Taiwan Province Province of China, contains red pigment of "Brazil sappan", and like alizarin, aluminum salt is reddish. The "purple oil" in Erya is a mordant dye used to dye purple in ancient times. Lithospermum contains shikonin. There are many mordant dyes that can be dyed yellow. For example, clover contains luteolin, which can be dyed bright yellow with green mordant. In ancient times, a special clover (called "Polygonum cuspidatum" in ancient times and dyed by Polygonum cuspidatum) was used as an accessory for officials. The bud of Sophora japonica is also an important mordant dye for yellow dyeing in ancient times. Mulberry skin "can be dyed brown when boiled for a long time." The pigment contained in Castanopsis fissa and Zhemu is called phenylacetone, and the dyed fabric is yellow with red light in the sun and brilliant red in the candlelight. This mysterious illumination color difference makes it the noblest color dye in ancient times. The Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty records that "the yellow robe of Zhemu was made by Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty for listening to the dynasty, and it is still regarded as a market", and it was also "to serve the Emperor of Heaven" in the Ming Dynasty. This clothing color system was later spread to Japan. Besides natural alum, the aluminum mordant used in ancient China also used Toona sinensis and Toona sinensis ash rich in aluminum salts as mordants. In the Song Dynasty, Dayuling River containing aluminum salts was used as mordant. Oak (that is, oak; And gallnut, a special product of China, all contain pyrogallic tannin; Persimmons and Hollyleaf contain catechol tannins. Tannin is directly used to dye the fabric light yellow, but it is black when it reacts with iron salts. In ancient times, black was often used as civilian clothing. In the Qin and Han Dynasties, "clothes and flags were all black." In the future, more and more iron mordants will be needed to dye black. By the 6th century, the working people in China had artificially manufactured iron mordants. Tannin-containing plants include sage and sapium sebiferum leaves, which are also raw materials recorded in ancient times that can be dyed black. Others, such as oak and pomegranate peel, are not recorded, but they are all black dyes used in the vast rural areas of China before liberation. Bluegrass is a natural redox dye. Blue grass contains indirubin, which can be dyed with water and oxidized into blue indigo by air. Before the Zhou Dynasty, fresh bluegrass was dipped and dyed. In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, indigo was reduced to indigo by fermentation, and cyan could be dyed with pre-made blue mud (including indigo), so there was a saying that "green is taken from blue, and green is greener than blue". In the 6th century A.D., Jia Sixie of the Northern Wei Dynasty described in detail the method of making indigo from blue grass in ancient China: "Cut the blue grass upside down in a pit and put it into water", and live it with stones or wood, so that all the blue grass is immersed in water, and the soaking time is "overnight while it is hot, and then overnight when it is cold", and then filtered, and the filtrate is put into an urn, "with a rate of ten stone jars". This can be said to be the earliest operation record of preparing indigo in the world. By the Ming Dynasty, there were already five kinds of blue grass that could make indigo, and people had observed that the dyed indigo hid the color of red flame (Tiangong Wu Kai), which indicated that the working people in China had noticed that there was still a small amount of indigo in natural indigo. Other dyes safflower is one of the plant dyes that can be dyed red in ancient times. During the Qin and Han dynasties, there were people who "planted red and blue flowers as their profession". The red and blue flowers are safflower, which contains a red pigment called crocin and a yellow pigment. Crocin can be leached from safflower with alkali solution, and then it will glow red with acid. The complicated physical and chemical processes of impregnating and extracting dyes from safflower are described in detail in the book Qi Yaomin. At that time, the acids used were organic acids such as "millet syrup" and "vinegar pomegranate" as color developers. In Heavenly Creations, ebony was added as a coloring agent. The organic acids in pomegranate and ebony are polybasic acids, and their hair color effect is better than that of acetic acid (polybasic acid) in "millet rice pulp". The precipitation is fast and the color is pure during neutralization. If you want to peel off the original red color of the fabric dyed with safflower, you only need to "dip-dye the silk" and drop dozens of drops of alkali rice ash, and the red color on the fabric will be restored. The washed red water is not discarded, "hidden in mung bean powder", and can be released to be dyed red when needed in the future, "half a drop is not consumed". Besides safflower, Rehmannia glutinosa and Hollyleaf can also be used as basic dyes (Qi Yaomin's book and Compendium of Materia Medica). Image reference: I167. photobucket/albums/u158/maydata/garden/plant pigment.
For example, mangosteen turns red when boiled in water, and cloth can be dyed red when put in water. For example, there is a kind of blue jam fruit, and the correct name has been forgotten. Also, the fruit is boiled in water, then the residue is separated, dyed and made into blue cloth. But those blues are so light. )