Dyes in History and Archaeology

Deep in the past, in South America and Mesopotamia, textile fibres were being given colour, purple and red, to make them attractive and interesting and to give pleasure to those who wore them. Many centuries later, South America was the source of a bright and unusual blue, Maya blue, used in painting, but this too is associated with a more complicated, more varied story. This and other stories will take the reader from the earliest times, a glimmer of colour in the distant past, to the very real conservation problems of deteriorating containers of early synthetic dyes - a long and colourful history.