Wonderful woad. The results of wild flower plugs we gave for children to plant at the local train station. Woad (isatis tinctoria) has been used to produce blue dye for centuries. The word ‘picts’ given to the warriors of Northern Britain by the Romans comes from the Latin pictus meaning painted. Woad was strongly associated with East Anglia and the Iceni tribe who also used it as a war paint and a battle field antiseptic where it was used to staunch blood flow. Woad became a valuable field crop between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. The first year leaves were chopped into a paste and then rolled into balls and left to dry. These were then broken down into a powder, sprinkled with water and left to dry again before being given in barrels to the dyer. The dyer would pour hot water over the woad along with either potash or urine and leave it to ferment for three day. At this point it was ready for use, and cloth would be submerged into the barrels or vats. During 1500’s during a period of food shortage leading up to the famine of 1586 the growth of woad was restricted as too much land was being devoted to this rather than cereals. Queen Elizabeth I issued a “Proclamation against the sowing of woade” on 14 October 1585, stating that the breaking up and sowing of the most fertile ground with woad was a cause of great complaint and that no person was to break up ground for the present nor to sow woad within four miles of a market or clothing town or within eight miles of any house of the Queen’s. This was amended in 1587 to allow no more than 40 or 60 acres of woad in any one parish and no more than 20 acres sown by one person yearly. Indigo from the colonies slowly started to replace woad as a blue dye. The last woad factory, in Lincolnshire, closed in 1932.
Posted on: Wed, 14 May 2014 21:07:44 +0000
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