Kermes & Cudbear (and Scottish rain?)

Cudbear and Kermes -- these are not a comedy partnership or a firm of Dickensian lawyers, but associated nevertheless, as these were both once widely used red textile dyes.

Kermes is an very ancient dyestuff, probably known at least since the bronze age, using scale insects, producing a rich scarlet,  so costly only the richest could afford it, until it was replaced by cochineal from Spanish Mexico in the late 1500s.

Roman Catholic cardinals in red robes, illumination from the Tres Riches Heures de Duc de Berry, France 1500s

Kermes dye was  much coveted by the Romans, who called it 'grana' ,  hence "dyed in the grain", without realising that the berry-like granules were the bodies of the female kermes vermilio insect, found on the branches of  the Mediterranean oak (quercus coccifera).
"Kermes is of the bigness of a pea, and of a brownish red colour, covered when most perfect, with a purplish grey dust.  It contains a multitude of soft granules, which, when crushed, yield a scarlet juice.  It is found adhering to a kind of holm oak. "  So Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary of 1755.

Traditionally it was harvested by women: in medieval France in the Languedoc there are accounts of the women going out with lanterns and baskets, as the best time to find the female kermes insects with their unhatched eggs was just before dawn.  At harvest time in May, the women would grow a fingernail extra long for scraping the granules from the branches.   The insects were needed in such large quantities that the scarlet dye cost ten times as much as other dyestuffs.

Coronation cloak of Roger II of Sicily, 1133-34

Equally ancient, but much less spectacular is cudbear, a plant dye. Cudbear comes from lichens, particularly  ochrolecia tartarea, known as crottle in Scotland, but orchil or archil in England.

Ochrolecia tartarea lichen, i.e. Scottish 'crottle', archil or orchil.

 Samples have been found in neolithic caves in France and it was used by the Egyptians to make rich red and purple dye colours  (recorded in the Stockholm Papyrus circa 3rd or 4th century AD).   

The lichen was dried, pounded and then soaked in a urine solution to ferment for two weeks, producing a range of shades.

Archil was used for the rich reds of the finest Florentine silks, rediscovered and refined in Italy in the middle ages.  By the eighteenth century British dyers were importing costly red and purple dyestuffs from abroad - madder from Dutch East India  merchants, and archil (Spanish weed) from the Canaries and Cape Verde.  The demand for better and cheaper dyes and more variety continued into the nineteenth century.  

Cudbear Street in the Hunslet area of Leeds is a reminder of the Wood & Bedford dye works which was there in the nineteenth century, but the patent for commercial Cudbear dyestuffs begins in Scotland with one George Gordon, a coppersmith from the Highlands.  Repairing copper vessels in London, he noticed the dye-maker using a similar method to that of his granny who used native lichens.

George Gordon's comments intrigued his chemist nephew Cuthbert Gordon, who started researching and produced a commercial method for using native lichens, instead of expensive imported dyestuffs.  He and his uncle took out a patent in 1758  and found investors to help them set up a factory in Leith.  He called his dye "cudbear", after his family name Cuthbert. 

The Cudbear patent,   1758  © Scottish School Archives

By 1773 the factory was failing, and Cuthbert was imprisoned for debt, but was released in 1774 to revive the factory in order to repay the investors.  His patent method produced strong red and violet shades suitable for dyeing cotton, as well as wool, with less need for the mordants to help the dye 'bite' firmly onto the fibres.   He advertised with samples  "dyed in a saucepan" so not at full strength, to show his Cudbear could replace costly imported indigo and cochineal.

Cuthbert Gordon's sample advertising from his Leith Walk premises 1774 (from Scottish School Archives)

Cuthbert's efforts attracted a canny Glasgow merchant to invest in 1776 and the factory was moved from Edinburgh to Dunchatton in Glasgow.

Did this fuel the ambition of the merchant's 10 year old son Charles?, for in 1796 he left his clerking job and set up his own factory producing ammonium chloride.

He went on to achieve fame as an industrial chemist and his invention of rubberised cloth made his family name a household word around the globe.  He was, of course, Charles Macintosh (1766-1843).

From the Mackintosh catalogue, 1893  By now the variant K had become standard spelling
 © Mackintosh.com

And skilled fingers, like the insect harvesters', are still part of the manufacturing process:

A special glue is applied by finger, to seal the sewn pieces together. © Mackintosh.com