Day 3 - Indigo from plant to dye

Dried Indigo Cake

 

 

Historically  textiles were an important economic commodity in India, China, Japan, and Africa.
Indigo is a natural dye extracted from plants that resulted in a rare and widely sought after deep and permanent blue color. They planted, dyed, and traded their cotton and silk fabrics each grappling  for the richest corner of the market.  
There are several species of Indigo plants some yielding more pigment than others but the lengthy process of extracting the dye is the same. 

First the indigo plant leaves were soaked in large vats of water until they fermented producing the blue dye  material called indigotin. Next the fermented leaf mixture was strained and combined with lye and pressed into cakes to dry.  When the cakes dried they were ground into a fine powder to be combined with other ingredients making  dye colors ranging from shades of blue to purple.