Does anyone know anything more about this?:
'Italia, Pompeii - è avvenuto il primo tentativo di colorazione di tessuti usando le techniche degli antichi
A Pompei, Il 15 novembre del 2008 si è sperimentata per la prima volta la tintura di tessuti utilizzando le tecniche antiche. La caldaia usata è stata ricostruita apposta dal Centro studi Jean Berard, dove gli studiosi si sono basati alle caldaie originali d’epoca romana che si sono conservate integre in certe tintorie della parte antica della città.' (Martina Calogero, ArcheoRivista, 12 January 2009)
A blog for all those who work on Pompeii and the other archaeological sites of the Bay of Naples.
4 comments:
Did it work??
I was there, actually; it was part of a three day conference on ancient textiles (purpureae vestes III). The experiment was carried out by Marie-Pierre Puybaret and Philippe Borgard and it actually worked rather well, but that is no wonder, because they had been experimenting for several years before trying at Pompeii. They had reconstructed two of the furnaces, including the lead cauldron. What struck me was the smell. Studying fullers, I am kind of focused on this. Indeed, you could smell that something was happening in the workshop, but it was rather bearable, as the smell of wood burning was dominant over that of the dyestuffs and mordants.
On the other hand, though the experiment was highly interesting, I was wondering about the ethical side of doing this kind of experiments on an archaeological site after making a partial reconstruction of the installations that is going to be permanent. From a heritage point of view, this did not seem straightforwardly justifiable to me.
It's interesting about the smell, it suggests that these premises were not nearly as offensive as one would imagine (although in general there would have been lots of different offensive smells in the ancient city, all in competition with each other, so probably we shouldn't single out fulleries and the like as being exceptional!). What was the quality of the colours like?
Here is an image:
http://www.controluce.it/files/imagecache/pro500/files/Ricostruzione%20caldaia.jpg
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