Dye
Description
A compound that absorbs into and colors another material. A dye is generally a complex organic material. The process of coloring fibers with natural dyes has been practiced for thousands of years. dyes Natural dyes were extracted from from plants (alkanet, annatto, archil, brazilwood, berries buckthorn berries, cudbear, (dye) cutch, fustic, madder, indigo, litmus, logwood, morinda, quercitron, safflower, saffron, sassafras, sumac, turmeric, turnsole, walnut dye walnut, dye weld, and woad.), lichens (archil), insects (kermes, dye lac dye, cochineal) and shellfish (purple Tyrian purple). Synthetic dyes, first derived in 1856 from coal-tar extracts, were brighter, less expensive, more colorfast and quickly replaced most natural dyes. dyes Synthetic dyes, of which there are over ten thousand, are generally categorized into groups based on their reactivity, their solubility and their method of application.
For more information see entries on the following: dye acid dye; dye aniline dye; dye anthraquinone dye; dye azo dye; dye basic dye; dye vat dye; dye developed dye; dye direct dye; dye disperse dye; dye fiber-reactive dye; dye metallized dye; dye naphthol dye; dye sulfur dye
Synonyms and Related Terms
dyestuff; dyes; teinture (Fr.); Farbstoffe (Deut.); substancje barwice (Pol.); colorante (Esp.); corante (Port.)
Additional Information
Colorant Industry History (in U.S.) at colorantshistory.org
Authority
- R. J. Gettens, G.L. Stout, R. J. Gettens, G.L. Stout, Painting Materials, A Short Encyclopaedia, Dover Publications, New York, 1966
- Reed Kay, Reed Kay, The Painter's Guide To Studio Methods and Materials, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1983
- Ralph Mayer, Ralph Mayer, A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1969 (also 1945 printing)
- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, at http://www.wikipedia.com Comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dye (Accessed Mar. 1, 2006)
- Random House, Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997
- The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998
- Art and Architecture Thesaurus Online, http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, 2000