08/12/2025
A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to meet Jenny Rose at the market. We got chatting, as you do, about dying yarn and in particular about the madder dyed yarn I had on the stall. It turns out Jenny is an expert on lots of woolie things and has a special interest in the transmission of textiles and their motifs through researching early trade and traffic along the Silk Roads, and then leading trips along those routes. She is, in fact, leading another trip in March which sounds fascinating. Jenny promised some more information which I am really pleased to pass on. And here it is:-
"We know from sources such as Marco Polo that in medieval times Indian cotton fabrics were considered superior to any other. Some rare early fragments in the Ashmolean Museum, dating to around the time of Marco Polo, are evidence of the export of cotton across the Indian Ocean, from East Africa to Indonesia; they were found in Egypt, but made in Gujarat. The cotton is predominantly dyed blue and red: indigo for blue, and madder for red [Ind. madder: rub cordifolia]
It’s in this same 13th – 14th century timeframe that we know Norwich dyers in the cloth industry lived and worked along the foreshore of the river in the central part of the city, with another group around Westwick Street. The eastern section of Westwick Street was known as 'Lestere Row,' from ‘Lister' or Dyer; this section led to the Maddermarket, where the dyestuffs were sold. Rose/Dyers Madder (rubia tinctorum), native to Iran and eastern Mediterranean, was imported in large quantities from the Netherlands to Norfolk, before being grown extensively in East Anglia.
One Norfolk trader who brought in Madder from the Netherlands for his dyeing, and exported worked goods in return, was Thomas Baret. He was from an established Norwich merchant family. Most of the output from his looms was for the domestic market, but as both a manufacturer and exporter, his letter book provides a vivid picture of the textile industry in Norwich over five years. There were many varieties of Norwich ‘stuffs’ and Baret often seems to have been confused by terminology used to describe various cloths, asking his associates to provide additional descriptions or patterns.
Records of the English East India Company show the introduction of ‘Kashmir' shawls to a British market. These imports, with their distinctive designs became very fashionable throughout Britain, Europe and then North America, but they were very expensive; the shawls were a mark of social status - as they were in Mughal India and Safavid Iran. The word ‘shawl' comes from Persian ‘shal’ for an article of clothing wrapped around upper body. As western demand for these shawls outstripped supply, hand weavers in Britain, France, and Holland began to produce cheaper imitations using the boteh (‘teardrop’; later known as ‘paisley’) design. The western hand-weaving technology was not as sophisticated however, and the initial shawls were limited to two colours (indigo and madder). Norwich began to manufacture shawls using the teardrop pattern on the borders, in the late 18th century; the motif was known as the ‘pine’ in Norfolk.
The red colour – known as ‘Norwich Red’- is an example of a plant dyeing process for madder invented by a Scottish-born dyer, who had apprenticed in London, then moved to Norwich. This dyer, named Michael Stark (1748-1831), lived in Thorpe and had dye works on Duke Street in Norwich. He invented a method of dyeing a silk warp, and wool weft, in one dye bath. The ability to colour match two or more materials is one of the most difficult jobs of the dyer. The recipe for Stark’s brilliant, fast-red ‘Norwich Red’ has been lost."
Thank you so much for this Jenny. I have added a picture of Madder growing in my greenhouse a couple of springs ago.
