Obtaining purple color and determination of fastness values of silk fabrics with root dye cochineals murex dyestuffs

Color has been an important element for humanity in the historical process. Until the mid-19th century, the main colorants used in daily life and in all areas of art were natural dyestuffs. When the Englishman Sir William Henry Perkin discovered the first synthetic organic dyestuff in 1856, it resembled the "royal purple" of antiquity. Purple was considered an important color in traditional textile dyeing due to its difficulty in obtaining and limited natural dyestuff resources. After 2000, it has started to gain importance again due to the reappearance of natural production trends, the non-toxic and non-carcinogenic effects of dyeing with natural dyestuff sources and the fact that dye wastes do not harm the environment. In this study, silk fabrics were dyed with plant-based root dye plant, insect-based cochinil and murex (1- murex turunculus, 2- murex brandaris, 3- murex Stramonita haemastoma) from sea snails to obtain purple color. After dyeing, all fabrics were subjected to washing, wet-dry rubbing and light fastness tests and their usability in the sectoral sense was also revealed. Among these dyestuff sources, the highest fastness values were determined as root dye, then kosinil and finally murex. First, 100 pieces of test fabrics were dyed and then 300 pieces were dyed with large fabrics. The literature on these dyestuff sources in the historical process was reviewed and the results given here were analyzed.