Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 27. (Budapest, 2009)
Enikő SIPOS: Hungarian-Related Textile Works in Switzerland
Alum, iron and copper salts or ammonia extracted from urine were the most commonly used mordant. The same dye will produce a different colour with different types of mordant, and consequently the 10-12 dyes used in the Middle Ages yielded a wide range of shades. The alizarin in madder (madder dye), for example, produces a fiery red in combination with aluminium, purple with iron, and brown with copper. 1 7 I believe the two painted banners cannot have been very different from the procedure described by the famous Florentine painter, Cennino Cennini in his muchquoted II Libro del! Arte-. "Now let us speak about how to work on cloth, that is, on linen or on silk. In the first place, stretch it out on frame, and begin by nailing down the lines of the seams. Then go around and around with tacks, to get it stretched out evenly. According to what the ground is, take crayons, either black or white. Do your drawing, and fix it with tempered colour. If the same scene or figure has to be executed on both sides, and you have to draw by day, contrive to have light from the window or candle on the side with the drawing, and have the light from one little window shine on what you have to draw. Then size with the usual size wherever you have to paint or gild, and mix a little white of egg with this size, mixed with a small amount of white lead. You put on two coats of it thinly wherever you wish to gild. Furthermore, you may paint any subject in the usual way, tempering the colours with yolk of egg. And let this serve for ensigns, banners and all." 1 8 Similar recipes can be found in a collection compiled by Alcherius in 1431 from recipes he learnt during his studies in painting. He provides the names and ingredients of paints and dyes, and shares his practical experience of working with them. Alcherius may have been a trained painter himself, but he certainly obtained the recipes he published from professionals. His essay De Diversis Coloribus contains proven recipes dating from the middle of the fourteenth century. The collection includes recipes and techniques for textile painting and dying. They refer to transparent paints, but the author's comments for each recipe describe how they can be used for drawing characters and figures on a coloured ground cloth. The characteristic of the technique was that the motifs were drawn on the fabric with mordant first, after which the cloth was dried. The dry cloth was then immersed in a dye and dried again. Subsequent rinsing in water would then remove the dye in places where no mordant had been applied." Alcherius gives the recipes for dyes, adding, "The aforesaid Theodore, from whom I had the above-written recipes for the aforesaid waters, told me that in England the painters work with these waters upon closely woven cloths, wetted with gum-water made with gum arabic, and then dried, and afterwards stretched out on the floor, upon thick woollen and frieze cloths; and the painters, walking with their clean feet over the said cloths, work and paint upon them figures, stories, and other things. And because these cloths lie stretched out on a flat surface, the coloured waters do not flow or spread in painting upon them, but remain where they are placed, and the watery moisture skins into the woollen cloth, which absorbs it; and even he touches of the paintbrush with these waters do not spread, because the gum with which, as already mentioned, the cloth is wetted, prevents their spreading. And when the cloths are thus painted, their texture is not thickened or darkened any more than if they had not been painted, because the aforesaid watery colours have not sufficient to body to thicken the cloth." 2 0 139
