Mad about Madder
The stalks of the Madder are so weak that they often lie along the ground, preventing the plant from rising to its maximum height of 8 feet. The red dye obtained from Madder (Rubia tinctorum) is based on the anthraquinone molecule.
Madder has been used for many centuries and the cotton textiles dyed with it around 3000 BC date back to the Indus Valley civilisation. In the middle ages, madder became an important herb extensively grown in France and Germany. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the Dutch acquired a monopoly over madder production and it was exported to India for the expanding cotton industry.
The strong and almost fadeless cotton dye known as Turkey red was developed in India and spread from here to Turkey. It involved about twenty separate processes using wood, oil, rancid fat, charcoal, dung of cows, sheep, or dogs and liquid contents from an animal stomach. Not surprisingly, only the dyers and their families occupied villages where the dyeing was done.
The use of madder declined abruptly following the development of synthetic alizarin in 1869. Today, most of the vegetable dye printed clothes of Rajasthan are printed with synthetic alizarin. Good Madder dye powder produced in India costs upto about Rs 5,000 per kilogramme (kg). Good quality madder wood/root is priced at Rs 100