Madder

[Travellers | Cities | Routes | Trade Goods | Themes]

by Caroline Stone

Madder – known as phenix in Greek, rubia in Latin, fuwwa in Arabic and qian in Chinese is a red dye, derived from the roots of plants of the very large Rubiaceae family; dyers’ madder generally being Rubia tinctorum. It requires a temperate climate and is found wild in south and central Europe, southern Russia and elsewhere, but was very widely cultivated. It was an important trade item for millennia and was particularly fashionable in the 19th century, before the introduction of aniline dyes.

There is still much discussion as to when and where madder was first used for dyeing. The first surviving example seems to be c. 1370 B.C. from Tel el-Amarna in Egypt, where linen was dyed red with madder, and purple with madder + indigo. The dye was, however, almost certainly known well before this date.

Madder was widely used in the classical world, but little is known about the organization of the trade. The medieval Islamic sources are more revealing and generally credit the Caspian region with producing the best quality roots, large quantities of which were exported to India, presumably because it was cheaper, or easier to work with, than the indigenous red dye, lac. Istakhri c.951 A.D. mentions it as a product of the Caspian area; al-Biruni (c.973-1048 A.D.) gives it as an export from Balkh and Armenia to Persia and India, while Ibn Hawqal (c.943-988 A.D.) praises the madder grown on the islands of the Caspian.

Cloth identified as having been dyed with madder was found in the tomb of Queen Asa, c.800 A.D., on the banks of the Oslo Fjord. It is too far north to have been grown locally, so this may again have been imported from the Caspian, with which the Vikings had important trading links. Madder also came to be grown in England and numerous other parts of Europe.

An important port for the madder trade on its route east was Aden. A 12th century Chinese inspector of trade mentions ships laden with madder bound for India and possibly further east – indeed a number of the red and purple silk samples from the Far East analysed for their dye content show the presence of madder – while the Geniza documents give 5% as the duty payable on a shipment of madder at Alexandria at about the same date.

Varthema tells of 15 or 20 ships a year laden with madder passing through Aden, while several other travellers mention it as forming part of the merchandise of the east-bound caravans. Barbaro in 1421 A.D. describes Persian dyers, travelling to India with large quantities of madder to exercise their craft there. Shiraz and Isfahan were particularly important centers of madder working.

Red was a fashionable colour in the 19th century and the madder industry experienced a boom, particularly in the Caspian area. However, as with all natural dyes, it was severely affected by the discovery of synthetic dyes – cheaper, easier to use, brighter and more stable – and madder production declined almost to nothing in the course of the past century.

Increasing sophistication, however, on the part of buyers has resulted in a limited revival of natural dyes. One particularly interesting example is the DOBAG (Doqal Boya Arastirma ve Gelistirme Projesi – the Natural Dye Research and Development Project) Project, backed by Marmara University at Istanbul, which aims to reproduce fine old rug patterns with traditional natural dyes, including madder, in an effort to protect Turkey’s carpet making heritage from adulteration by synthetic colours and alien designs.