A Dictionary of Arts: Woad.

A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines; containing A Clear Exposition of Their Principles and Practice

by Andrew Ure, M. D.;
F. R. S. M. G. S. Lond.: M. Acad. M. S. Philad.; S. PH. DOC. N. GERM. Ranow.; Mulh. Etc. Etc.

Illustrated with nearly fifteen hundred engravings on wood
Eleventh American, From The Last London Edition.
To which is appended, a Supplement of Recent Improvements to The Present Time.

New York: D Appleton & company, 200 Broadway. Philadelphia: George S. Appleton, 148 Chestnut St.
MDCCCXLVII

1847

WOAD (Vouëde, Pastel, Fr., Waid, Germ.; Isatis tinctoria, Linn.), the glastum of the ancient Gauls and Germans, is an herbaceous plant which was formerly much cultivated, as affording a permanent blue dye, but it has been in modern times well nigh superseded by indigo. Pliny says, "A certain plant which resembles plantago, called glastum, is employed by the women and girls in Great Britain for dyeing their bodies all over, when they assist at certain religious ceremonies; they have then the colour of Ethiopians." - Hist. Nat. Cap. xxii. § 2.

When the arts, which had perished with the Roman empire, were revived, in the middle ages, woad began to be generally used for dyeing blue, and became an object of most extensive cultivation in many countries of Europe. The environs of Toulouse and Mirepoix, in Upper Languedoc, produced annually 40,000,000 pounds of the prepared woad, or pastel, of which 200,000 bales were consumed at Bordeaux. Beruni, a rich manufacturer of this drug, became surety for the payment of the ransom of his king, Francis I., then the prisoner of Charles V. in Spain.

The leaves of woad are fermented in heaps, to destroy certain vegetable principles injurious to the beauty of the dye, as also to elaborate the indigoferous matter present, before they are brought into the market; but they should be carefully watched during this process. Whenever the leaves have arrived at maturity, a point judged of very differently in different countries, they are stripped off the plant, a cropping which is repeated as often as they shoot, being three or four times in Germany, and eight or ten times in Italy. The leaves are dried as quickly as possible, but not so much as to become black; and they are ground before they get quite dry. The resulting paste is laid upon a sloping pavement, with gutters for conducting the juice, which exudes into a tank: the heap being tramped from time to time, to promote the discharge of the juice. The woad ferments, swells, and cracks in many places, which fissures must be closed; the whole being occasionally watered. The fermentation is continued for twenty or thirty days, in cold weather; and if the leaves have been gathered dry, as in Italy, for four months. When the fermented heap has become moderately fry, it is ground again, and put up in cakes of from one to three pounds; which are then fully dried, and packed up in bundles for the market. Many dyers subject the pastel to a second fermentation.

1,600 square toises (fathoms) of land afford in two cuttings at least 19,000 pounds of leaves, of which weight four fifths are lost in the fermentation, leaving 3,880 pounds of pastel, in leaves or cakes. When good, it has rather a yellow, or greenish-yellow, than a blue color; it is light, and slightly humid; it gives to paper a pale-green trace; and improves by age, in consequence of an obscure fermentation; for if kept four years, it dyes twice as much as after two years. According to Hellot, 4 pounds of Guatimala indigo produce the same effect as 210 pounds of the pastel of Albi. At Quins, in Piedmont, the dyers estimate that 6 pounds of indigo are equivalent to 300 of pastel; but Chaptal thinks the indigo underrated.

Pastel will dye blue of itself, but it is commonly employed as a fermentative addition to the proper blue vat, as described under INDIGO.

Fresh woad, analyzed by Chevreul, afforded, in 100 parts, 65.4 of juice. After being steeped in water, the remaining mass yielded, on expression, 29.65 of liquid, being in whole, 95.05 parts, leaving 4.95 of ligneous fibre. The juice, by filtration, gave 1.95 of green fecula. 100 parts of fresh woad, when dried, are reduced to 13.76 parts. Alcohol, boiled upon dry woad, deposites, after cooling, indigo in microscopic needles; but these cannot be separated from the vegetable albumine, which retains a greenish-gray color.