Racked, The history of green dye is a history of death.Science and Industry Museum blog, The world's first synthetic dye.Science Museum blog, Can a colourful future be sustainable?.
Perkin’s research supervisor Hofmann, who had at first criticised his student for leaving his quinine researches to pursue the commercial manufacture of artificial dyes, later synthesised his own aniline dye, rosaniline.įind out more about fashion and synthetic dyes Mauveine made Perkin a fortune and other chemists followed suit. Ultimately Perkin settled on the name mauveine because the word mauve was then associated with Parisian haute couture.īy August 1859, according to the satirical magazine Punch, London had succumbed to 'the mauve measles'. As the author Simon Garfield has noted, this shows Perkin was deliberately referencing the ancient murex dye in order to give his synthetic dye greater market appeal.Įmpress Eugénie of France (1826–1920), a leader of fashion, also favoured the colour. Perkin initially called his mauveine 'Tyrian purple'. Wearing purple was therefore favoured by the wealthy as a mark of high social status. Tyrian purple was an ancient dye, very expensive because the shells of thousands of murex sea snails produced only a tiny amount. Image source for Detail of fringing and sleeve on a purple dress dyed with Perkin's mauveine dye c.1862ĭetails on a dress dyed with Perkin's mauveine dye, 1862-63Īlthough not the first chemist to make an artificial dye from aniline, Perkin was astute enough to realise the commercial potential of his purple product. Having an antidote to malaria would strengthen Europe’s colonial grip.īut instead of synthesising quinine, Perkin discovered how to make the purple dye mauveine. Quinine, a natural product derived from the bark of the cinchona tree, was in demand because of its antimalarial properties. Under the instruction of August Wilhelm von Hofmann (1818–1892), William Henry Perkin had been experimenting with aniline, a colourless aromatic oil derived from coal tar, in an attempt to synthesise quinine. The synthetic dye mauveine, too, was entangled in the story of European colonial aggression. Cochineal insects native to the Americas became the sought-after scarlet dye carmine. However, as European imperial powers colonised the world, the natural resources of other countries were plundered to meet the European appetite for coloured fabrics.Įxtracts from the leaves of Indigofera tinctoria made the eponymous indigo dye. Natural dyes have a rich, long and colourful history. Before mauveine and other artificial colours, natural products were used for centuries to dye materials.
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