Reawakening the Art of Natural Dyeing

Imagine a world without colors! A world with no soothing blue color of the sky, no tempting red color of pomegranate, and no freshening green color of spring buds! Imagining such a gloomy world just for a few seconds, shows us how vital are the colors in our life. It must be admitted that without colors there is no joy in the life.

Historically, man has been fascinated by colors of the nature. His feelings and emotions were awakened by Colors, and gradually he began to think of using colors to express his feelings, and communicate with others. Early natural dyes had driven from plant, animal and mineral sources and were used for dyeing of body, home accessories, jewelries and ancient murals. During centuries, people around the world, have extracted dyes from different parts of plants, Insects and animals. Traditional natural dyes are resulted from many trails and errors and are based on the collective experience of different ethnics. For this reason, natural dyes are the important part of the world’s cultural and ecological heritage.

After learning spinning and weaving, man started to use natural dyes for dyeing fibers and textiles, and according to archeological evidences the art of natural dyeing was flourished in Iran, India, China and Egypt civilizations. Natural dyeing has a long history in Iran. Greek historian, Xenophon refers to rug weaving workshops of Achaemenid kings in the ancient city of Sardis (400 B.C.), and also purple rug which covered the Tomb of Cyrus, along with green, blue, red and yellow colors which is applied in Pazyryk carpet margin, all are evidences suggest an evolved art. During the tumultuous history of Iran secrets and techniques of natural dyeing, along with the art of carpet weaving, were transmitted from one generation to the next and remained this way until the middle of Qajar dynasty.

The rule of Qajar dynasty in Iran coincided with the golden age of development of modern sciences in the West. In 19^th century by development of organic chemistry, synthetic dyes were extracted from Fossil resources. Very soon, the application of natural dyes had been marginalized due to the low price, easy production, high stability and widespread application of synthetic dyes, in a way that, currently, 90% of textiles are dyed by synthetic dyes (Donatelli, 2016). Despite the mentioned benefits, synthetic dyes are very dangerous for biosphere.

In recent years, new trends are emerging. Environmental crisis and gradual fading of cultural values and traditions in local communities, created the concept of “sustainable development”. Modern man finally found out that natural resources are finite and there will be limitations for growth. Several Publications  such as Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and Club of Rome Report warned about the increasing concerns about global environment. These publications in line with Brundtland Report (1987) titled “Our Common Future” argued that the human survival depends on adopting a new paradigm of development known as “Sustainable Development”. “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. This is the only way to protect environment, and at the same time to achieve economic growth, poverty alleviation and social equity (McCool & Moisey, 2008). Brundtland Report was based on the well-established idea of Murphy (1995): “we do not inherit the Earth from our forefathers, but borrow it from our children”(Shafiei et al, 2016).

In line with this trend, by increasing public awareness about environmental treats of synthetic dyes and their dependence on nonrenewable resources, and the cultural importance of traditional dyeing methods, led modern consumers to use natural dyes. Natural dyes are mostly extracted from renewable resources and unlike synthetic dyes, and have no damaging effects on ecosystem. Unfortunately, natural dyes as a part of intangible heritage of local communities, are gradually forgotten. Every traditional color around the world, carries a special cultural message which is based on myths of locals. From economic perspective, the enhancement of local productions is another motivation –especially in developing countries- to use traditional natural dyes in textile industry. However, we may not assert that synthetic dyes could be replaced by natural dyes in near future, because consumption and production of natural dyes is not economically justified yet, and obviously it needs more researches in the future.