The History and Scientific Analysis of Pre-1856 Eastern Woodlands Quillwork Dyes
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The History and Scientific Analysis of Pre-1856 Eastern Woodlands Quillwork Dyes Christina L. Cole1 1 Department of Art Conservation, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, U.S.A. ABSTRACT Native American quillwork is well documented in art historical and anthropological literature. Methods for folding quills to create floral and abstract designs are addressed, but studies of the materials used to color the quills are conspicuously absent. This is particularly true for the pre-aniline dyes used by communities east of the Mississippi, as historical recipes tend to be more reflective of Plains and Pacific Northwest quillwork traditions. Research to derive quill dye baths from raw materials has and continues to be pursued, but no large-scale scientific analysis of existing quillwork has previously been undertaken. To address this literature gap, a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis project has been completed on early quillwork in the collections of the McCord Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; reflectance spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence were also used as complementary techniques and to investigate the use of metal salts as quill stains. An extensive literature review provides a historical understanding of pre-1856 quillwork dyes; this representation will be compared with the usage patterns suggested by the collections’ analysis. A more complete understanding of Native dye technology, addressing assumptions currently made with regards to the use of mordants, mixing of multiple dyestuffs in a single bath, and incorporation of “Old World” dyes, will also be presented. INTRODUCTION Porcupine quillwork is a uniquely Native North American embroidery technique, in which brightly colored quills are folded, woven, or otherwise manipulated to create floral and abstract designs [1-4]. The absence of contemporary Native American accounts of quill dyes used between the early 1600s and 1856 leaves colonial travel journals, twentieth-century anthropological studies, and modern histories of European and North American textile industries as the basis for today’s understanding of early Eastern Woodlands quillwork dye technology. A list of nearly 50 natural dyes from plants and animals on both sides of the Atlantic can be compiled from these Euroamerican sources [5], but it is not possible simply to look at quillwork within a museum collection and determine which dye from the list was used to color the quills, particularly as significant color change may occur over time [6-8]. A usual approach to quill dye identification has been to prepare sets of naturally dyed quills for matching purposes to museum objects, similarly to how modern paint formulations are matched to existing paint in historic homes [9,10]. Such an approach provides valuable insight into dye bath technology, but because very similar colors can be obtained from very different dye
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materials, historic quill dye identification by matching will always be associated with some degre
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