Do you ever end up going down a rabbit hole when looking for something on the internet? As madder is one of my all-time favourite dyes I had to read this paper. Although the chemistry, history and archaeological evidence for madder use were of interest, it was her experimentation that really caught my attention. I discovered some intriguing results in her experiments that looked at the effect of time, temperature, pH and mordant on the resulting colour across a number of different fibre types. There is a lot to digest in this paper but the findings on temperature and time correlated with my own experiences of accidentally exceeding the 70°C theoretically required to get a good red from madder. My own accidents have hit 95° - 100℃ without any adverse impact on the fibre or colouration.
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