Tutorial I. Colorants. Beyond the recipe
This is the first video tutorial of Michel Garcia's video course "From plant to dye". It contains Michel's lectures, demonstrations, recipes and description of plants. This course is suitable for all people with strong interest to natural dyes.
This video course contains appr. 280 minutes of video and a 25-pages handout.
English narration, subtitles in French, Italian, Spanish and German.
Classification of colorants and biodiversity
Many plants on Earth produce coloring matters. However, only a few of them yield colorants, which can be extracted and worked out to be economically usable.
Anthocyanins: false friends
Anthocyanins are called “chameleons between plant pigments” because they are too pH sensitive
Chemistry of flavonoids
Flavonoids represent a giant group of colorants which give colors from lemon yellow to orange. They are subdivided in several groups. Michel gives a lecture about chemistry of flavonoids. What is the secret of their lightfastness, how can we manage it?
Pagoda tree: extract, lake and printing paste
Demonstration and recipes
Neoflavonoids. Logwood demo
Logwood is very popular, but it is a versatile dye. How can we stabilize it? The secret of Logwood dye stabilization.
Quinone dyes
Quinone colorants are extremely valuable for the dyer. Michel gives a lecture about alizarin, the famous colorant present in madder roots.
The secret of beautiful madder red
Demonstration and recipes
Cochineal: extract and lake
Theory and demonstration
Safflower: selective extraction
Let's learn how to separate desired colorants from non-desired
annato, alcanet, sandalwood...dyes not soluble in water
Special cases: colorants poorly soluble in water
Indigo, the king of color
Michel talks about the chemistry of indigo, about lime and maintenance of the vat.
Indigocarmin, a promising blue colorant
From saxony blue to indigocarmin. Demonstration and a bit of theory
Turmeric: a fugitive dye
Turmeric demo.
Lichens: alternative source
of colorants
Demonstration
