Aniline black
Description
A synthetic black dye first observed in 1834 by German chemist F. Ferdinand Runge, who noticed that treating aniline with oxidizing agents yielded dark, near-black materials. A unique method to form aniline black in situ was patented by John Lightfoot in 1863. For this method, fabric, such as cotton, is soaked in an aqueous solution of aniline hydrochloride and an oxidizing agent, such as chromic acid, potassium chlorate or copper salts, which then polymerized the aniline within the fibers as the dye was heated or dried. This produced a strong, black color that was lightfast and wash resistant. Aniline black was also added to iron gall inks to produce a strong, initial black color. Once the aniline black faded, the iron and gallic acid color had developed a strong black tone (Kuhn 1986). Production of aniline black tended to weaken the cotton fibers as well as corrode the printing rollers, so by the 1930s it was almost totally replaced by safer synthetic dyes, such as sulfur and azo blacks.
Synonyms and Related Terms
Pigment Black 1; CI 50440; Oxidation Base 1; Solvent Black 5; noir d'aniline (Fr.); Anilinschwarz (Deut.); negro de anilina (Port.); azul de anilina (Esp.); anilini mayrh (Gr.); nero di anilina (It.); anilinezwart (Ned.); nigraniline
Resources and Citations
- Irene Bilbao Zubiri, "New synthetic black dyes: their discovery, production and everyday use (1859-1930)" Techne Link
- Seth C. Rasmussen, "The Early History of Polyaniline: Discovery and Origins”, Substantia, 1(2) 2017. Link
- H.Kuhn, Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art and Antiquities, Butterworths, London, 1986.
- A.Scharff, 'Synthetic dyestuffs for textiles and their fastness to washing', ICOM-CC Preprints Lyon, Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, 1999
- G.S.Brady, Materials Handbook, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1971
- Richard S. Lewis, Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 10th ed., 1993
- Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997
- Hermann Kuhn, Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art and Antiquities, Butterworths, London, 1986
- Matt Roberts, Don Etherington, Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: a Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1982
- Art and Architecture Thesaurus Online, http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, 2000
- CHSOS: Spectra (Reflectance, XRF, Raman, FTIR) for Aniline black
- E. Hagan, I. Castro-Soto, M. Breault, et al. The lightfastness of early synthetic organic dyes. Herit Sci 10, 50 (2022).