"Medieval clothing - colours to dye for!" Topic

Of possible interest, Medieval Dyestuffs, Dyeing & Colour Names useful for painting up your next medieval rabble. link

Of note, many colours were deemed unsuitable for the peasant class. Bright colours, it was thought, were not humble and engendered a feeling of pride which was a mortal sin.

Clothing in greys, browns and muted blues were thought most suitable for the lower class. This did not mean that peasants were dowdy. Greys and browns were available in a number of shades and clever colour coordination of hoods and tunics could still make for an attractive ensemble.

Blue was a colour which was available to most classes, both cheaply and expensively, in all shades ranging from muted, sombre blues to brilliant jewel blues of the upper classes.

Some wonderful examples are these Claymore Castings figures painted up by Leroy Simpson on the Lonelygamer blog site. With thanks. link

Thanks for that link. Very interesting reading.

Colours unsuitable for peasants…hmmmmmm…beware of Victorian (or later, especially leftist) romancing. Some countries did have sumptuary laws, but mostly nobody paid much attention. OTH a lot of dyes faded quickly, so relatively muted colours should mostly rule the roost.

Hard to find cheap, bright and colorfast all at once, so poverty works better than sumptuary laws. Mostly when you get complaints of people dressing above their station, it's some lawyer or merchant who made his pile, bought a country estate and is trying to ease himself into the local aristocracy.

A fake family tree helps, too--or marrying some aristo's spare daughter. (And anyone who thinks this went out with the middle ages needs to read Persuasion again.)

It must be remembered that sumptuary laws were passed on a regular basis implying that they were largely ignored. People have always wanted to dress beyond their means – medieval bling…

Clothing colors have nothing to do with alleged "leftist bias" (very few things do in the real world). It has to do with the nature of dyes and the difficulty of enforcing a law that is ignored by the bulk of the population.

Some dyes did fade as they do today and people may have kept clothes longer also leading to fading colors. Nevertheless they may have started fairly bright. Black was expensive though and so rarely seen amongest the lower classes.

Soldiers looted and so may often have obtained rich garments by that means.

Nobles issued cloth (people had to make their own cloths) in their colors to show the size of their retinues. Hence many in their household could well be wearing initially bright colors of the "nobility".

So its fine to vary your palate a bit.

TomT

Sadly Thomas, a good many things do when it comes to social history before the late modern period, though nothing like as much as Victorian/Edwardian romance and wishful thinking.

I hardly ever use black straight out of the pot, it is too… errr… black!

It is almost impossible to find a deep black in nature, even a tarmac road or a rubber tyre is either a shade of dark grey or very soon becomes one. For medieval liveries such as Salisbury or Northumberland which features black as a colour I normally mix a little dark grey into the paint to make a warmer black and then give a slight dry brush of something like German Panzer Grey mixed with black to create a grubby effect over the original black.

I picked up two new Tamiya paints the other day, XF-84 'Dark Iron' and XF-85 'Rubber Black' which may offer an 'out of the pot' alternative for Ancient and Medieval 'black'.

These appear to be so new they do not figure in the Tamiya online catalogue.

Barry

Salutations, Barry, and gentlefolk !

I use 'lamp black' out of the bottle only for shadows and 'blacklining'.

Just picked up Delta Ceramcoat 'Charcoal', #02436, will let you know how that works.

You may want to try colors labeled 'Payne's Gray', see how they work, report back.

Am also trying mixing black and dark blue paints for 'shadows', more when I know more.

Blue was a colour which was available to most classes,

Woad blue has a distinct tint, and other forms of blue (apart from crushed down lapis lazuli) were not available – so to say that "blue was available to most classes" seems a bit overenthusiastic. Original Indigo could be imported, but that about how far blue goes.

If you look at the circle of dyed threads in the linked article you see how many of them are blue, and in what hues.

Woad and indigo are not very different – the active chemical is the same. The difference is the concentration, making woad inferior as the same effect would need more 'dips'. Both indigo and woad need repeated soaking rather than simply leaving in for longer. The end result is similar enough that it is difficult to tell apart even using chemical analysis.
Marine snail dye could also produce blue – actually easier to do so than for it to be purple – but was expensive and probably didn't continue being used in the Medieval period.

I doubt lapis lazuli would be used for dye. It was the best blue paint pigment but not the only one – Egyptian blue was an early artificial pigment and pretty widespread under the Romans.

Covering the 'off-black' subject again, Tamiya has brought out two new colours. XF84 is called 'Dark Iron' while XK85 is described as 'Rubber Black'.
Both are really really dark greys, well beyond the Panzer Grey and I can see rubber black becoming my new 'medieval black' with a highlight dry brush of dark iron almost straight out of the pot.

Also, if you are doing tarmac roads, the same would apply; rubber black as the base coat, dry brush this out with dark iron and then a dust wash in crevices and at the gutters/kerbs and perhaps just a hint of medium grey in the main road.