Yellow

It is very very hot outside as I write this blog. We have just had a hosepipe ban imposed which is a nightmare as my vegetable garden is very far away from my garden tap for the purposes of lugging watering cans (we have used up all our water butts before anyone says anything). And the prevailing colour in my garden now is the straw yellow of dried grass. The only good thing about that is that it has inspired me to look into the colour yellow for the purposes of this blog.

I think that yellow is a controversial colour. Some people love it, because it evokes sunshine, and golden beaches and happiness. Others associate it with greed, duplicity and cowardice. The word ‘jaundice’ after all, derives from the French for yellow – ‘jaune’. A particularly bright yellow pigment was used by medieval artists to show outsiders and it was used to mark heretics and of course the Nazis used yellow stars to identify Jews. It has certainly been around for a long time in art, because yellow ochre was very widely available – it may have been one of the first colours used – there is a painting of a yellow horse in the Lascaux cave in France which dates back 17,000 years. In art there are many different yellow pigments, but I am primarily interested in the basis of yellow dyes for textiles.

Interestingly enough, it seems that the yellows used for textiles were very local – unlike indigo (blue) and cochineal (red) they were very rarely imported. This means that the preferred source of yellow in Europe, before the introduction of natural dyes, was weld. Weld (Reseda luteoloa L Resedaceae), or dyers mignonette (‘gaude’ in French) can grow in sandy and rocky soils, making it extensively available in wild fields in Europe. It is a biennial. I have not really noticed it growing wild – I am going to have a look next time I am out and about, and there is a photograph below.

It seems that every part of the plant produces yellow dye because it is rich in luteolin, a flavonid which produces the colour. Obviously, as it is a primary colour, it can then be blended with blue, for example from woad or indigo, to create green. As with all natural dyes, it needs to be fixed with a mordant – it is alum which brings out the bright yellow, whereas iron mordant creates a khaki or olive green.

Of course other plants will create yellow dyes – saffron for example – that this would be astonishingly expensive. Indeed a quick internet search came up with over 30 possibilities – Alfafa seeds, burdock, bay leaves, celery leaves, marigolds and many more. However, Jen from Fibreworkshop assures me that the medieval people knew best and weld is the most reliable yellow for dyeing wool.

The first official synthetic dye was yellow – picric acid dyes silk a bright yellow. However, picric acid was mostly used as an explosive and is highly toxic, so this discovery was quickly superseded by other synthetic dyes which of course are what are mostly used today.

I have to say that yellow yarns rarely sell well in the shop, unless they veer towards either orange or green. It is a ‘marmite’ colour – you either love it or hate it. I suspect many people feel uncomfortable wearing it as well – after all the word ‘gaude’ is one of the roots of the word ‘gaudy’, which can mean ‘showy, tastelessly rich’, ‘joyfully festive’ or, in early modern English, ‘full of trickery’. I like it, I always have, although it was a tricky colour to wear as a fair skinned red-head. What are your views?