makingandknowing - Annotation notes

Recipes for annotation:

<id>p076r_1</id>
<head>Making <m>Wood</m> Green</head>
<ab>
Take one quart of <m>white vinegar</m>, one ounce of green, and one ounce of <m>rock alum</m>. Mix them together and pour all your ingredients into a <m>leaded</m> pot over fire without taking any air. Then put your pot in <m>manure</m> for 15 days, after which time remove and boil your materials for three hours.</ab>

<id>p076r_2</id>
<head>Making <m>Wood</m> Red</head>
<ab>
Take one quart of <m>old urine</m>, three ounces of <m>madder</m>, and one ounce of <m>rock alum</m>, put all of the ingredients into your pot. Then follow the previously described green technique.</ab>

<id>p076r_4</id>
<head>For Making Purple <m>Wood</m></head>
<ab>
Take one quart of <m>urine</m> and one ounce of <m>alum</m> and ten drams of <m>sal ammoniac</m> and one dram of lacquer, then do as previously described.</ab>

Related recipes in manuscript

Beside remaining recipes on p076r:

<id>p075v_1</id>
<head>Making grey <m>wood</m></head>
<ab>One must take three demi-sestiers of <m>iron</m> filings per 18 deniers of <m>rock alum</m>, and for as much <supp>18 deniers</supp> <m>green copperas</m> for six deniers of <m>verdigris</m>, pitch and a quart of <m>currier water</m>; and if you can’t find any, use <m>rainwater</m> [blank] of a slight degree. </ab>

No mention of heat or resting time

<id>p078r_3</id>

<head>To make green <m>wood</m></head>

<ab>Take very strong <m>vinegar</m>, <m>salt</m>, and <m>rainwater</m>, and mix it together with <m>verdigris</m>, and put it with your <m>wood</m> in a new earthenware vessel, and lay it in some very warm <m>horse dung</m> for eight or nine days.</ab>

No application of heat until resting in warm horse dung. Substantially shorter resting time. Again, no application of heat after removed from manure.

*<id>p075v_4</id>

<head>Recipe for coloring all <m>wood</m></head>

<ab>To make it black, one must soak the wood in <m>olive oil</m> and tough <m>meat</m> in a similar case for four or five days, then boil it in where the wood has soaked for one hour, then take it <supp>the wood</supp> out of the oil. Take some <m>natural sulphur</m> if possible otherwise take another <m>sulphur</m>. Cover the aforementioned <m>wood</m> with this powder, until it cools, and bring it back to a boil. Upon boiling one will see whether or not it is black enough. If it is not, take the aforementioned powder and apply some over the <m>wood</m> and boil it.</ab>**

This recipe immediately precedes the wood dye recipes on p076r and is the only one that actually mentions wood is prepared. Probably not how wood was prepped for the recipes you are doing, though.

Materials and processes

Problems
- No information in manuscript recipes about what types of wood to use, how to prepare wood before dyeing (if at all); what is the mordant here?
  - Talk to Yuan about how they prepared their fabric or thread for dyeing; Roelof's and Philip both show the close connections between fabric dyeing and wood dyeing.
- Substitution for resting in warm manure (What temperature does the wood need to rest at?! Temperatures fluctuate between 40-60 degrees Celcius in manure piles); Joel suggested aquarium heater, but this won't likely get very warm (at most 10-15 deg. F above ambient room temp.) and is just hard to do because everything must be sealed and submerged in water; build a homemade incubator? I can probably safely sustain temperatures above 105 F with all the DIY plans I founds:

Questions to consider

References

Flavia Perugini Philp - "Coloured Woods on Eighteenth Century Furniture"

Incredibly useful; see if you can obtain any of the 18th and 19th C recipe manuals he references.

George A. Siddens - __The Cabinet-maker's Guide__ (1837)

Discussion of dyeing begins on p.16