Dyes

The recipes for the dyes, which worked exclusively with natural pigments, were among the best-kept secrets of calico printers until well into the 19th century. Towards the end of the 18th century, Schöppler & Hartmann procured madder (dyer’s red) from the Netherlands, alum, oak apples and vitriol oil from the Ottoman Empire, raw calico from India, gum arabic and yellow berries from Senegal, indigo from Central and South America and dye woods from Brazil and Java through an extensive network of agents. Dyes from Europe were supplied by the woad and dyer’s woad plants for the colours blue and yellow.

Schöppler & Hartmann drew inspiration for improved dyes from collaborating with the leading textile chemists of the time, such as Johann Gottfried Dingler (1778-1855) and Wilhelm Kurrer (1782-1862). The latter was the technical manager of the company from 1815 to 1830.

A new era in dye production for textile printing was ushered in by synthetic dyes that promised greater resistance and variety of colours. With the discovery of the first aniline dye in 1856 by William Henry Perkin (1838-1907), Friedrich Engelhorn (1821-1902), the founder of the Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik (BASF) in Ludwigshafen, which was still a part of Bavaria at the time, also recognised the importance of colour chemistry for the textile industry. BASF’s first efforts, for example, were aimed at producing aniline-based dyes or tar dyes. In 1901, BASF brought the lightfast and washfast indanthrene dyes onto the market. Today, textile dyeing mainly uses metal complex dyes.