A Little History of Turkey Red
mandy shaw
This is a Turkey Red block from one of antique quilts. It’s still a stunning rich red despite the fact that the block above has faded almost to nothing.
As I am so obsessed with the colour red and use it in so many of things I sew. We take red thread and fabric for granted but it wasn’t always easy to come by, colour fast or affordable so I thought I would give you a little history of this amazing colour to help us all appreciate it just a little bit more.
The beautiful reds that came from the Far East in the seventeenth century were envied by textile producers, the reds were bright and did not fade, but the technique was a well-kept secret In 1747, after much espionage the French discovered the secrets and Europe started producing this new improved dye. The first Turkey Red dye works established in the UK were in Manchester when Louis and Abraham Borelle of Rouen revealed its secrets and then later, in 1785, Jacques Papillion joined forces with the Scotsman George Mackintosh and Turkey Red cotton dying production took off in Scotland. The madder plant root is the main ingredient of this dye and it was a laborious technique, needing up to 38 stages to produce, including foul smelling processes that involve bulls blood, urine and animal dung!
Initially only yarn could be dyed with this method, cotton fabric was only dyed after 1810 after the process was improved. But the complicated and multiple processes needed meant the cloth often went through a lot of stages making the resulting fabric weak so although the red colour would last beautifully and be colour fast the fabric would wear badly and quickly.
The Vale of Leven in Scotland became the centre of Turkey Red and 90% of its output was exported all over the world. But in 1880 Germany produced a synthetic version of a red dye, making its production and finished products much cheaper and durable so eventually the infamous and complicated Turkey Red dye
production disappeared but, in my opinion, the colour red in cloth production has never been quite the same.
Download Mandy’s Turkey Red Blog here