Woad: History of a natural color
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Woad is the natural pigment obtained from Isatis tinctoria, historically used in Europe to dye textiles and yarns.
For six thousand years man has used plants to dye. Only for a little over a century, since the discovery of artificial color, has this magical practice been lost. Among all the natural colors now forgotten due to the daily choice of artificial colors, woad has a special history, which leads us to reflect on the recovery of ancient traditions and has several elements such as strong symbolism, the history of agriculture, art and costume.
Guado Urbino is located in the territory where woad has been grown and harvested for four hundred years.
In the Duchy of Urbino, specifically in the Apennine area, woad plant has been intensively cultivated for centuries. Important traces of cultivation and processing are given by the presence of many woad millstones scattered throughout the territory. Numerous documents narrate the control of cultivation, telling how the Duchy was a very important district of production until 1600.
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The colour of death and the enemy
Isatis tinctoria, known as 'woad', is a plant of the Brassicaceae family, is of Asian origin and was almost certainly introduced into the European area as early as the Neolithic period. Of all the dyeing plants, woad was the only one that was useful for dyeing textiles blue. The Greeks and Romans did not like blue: they associated it with the colour of death and identified it with the barbarian populations...
The colour of the divine and of nobility
From 1200 onwards in Europe, woad blue - applied to textiles - became the colour of the 'celestial divinity', of prestige, of nobility. The use and preciousness of this colour in clothing can be seen in the paintings and portraits that illustrate (between 1200 and 1600) noble characters and religious figures wearing woad blue dresses, mantles and accessories. The painters depicted people dressed in woad-dyed textiles, but using mineral pigments that imitated as closely as possible the shade of the naturally dyed fabric: they used lapis lazuli and azurite, for example.
Woad disappears
In 1600, indigo was imported to Europe from the East: it was a useful plant for blue dyeing, particularly convenient in terms of yield and cost. Cultivation of woad ceased abruptly, supplanted by the importation of indigo: that's the first globalization that destroys the native economy and tradition.
Henry William Perkin permanently changes the history of color
In 1856 Perkin discovered the first synthetic dye. For only 164 years, no more natural dyes were used in textile production, only industrial chemical dyes. Isn't it strange that such an overwhelming yet so recent innovation has made us forget how important nature has been?
