A HISTORY OF ROYAL PURPLE

Annie Nickerson of Burnt Fen Alpacas looks at the richness of natural dying and its links to the Coronation

Dress has always played a powerful part in signifying the status or role of a person in society and this is still true today. The coronation of King Charles will be a visual display of royal history and pageantry with the Kings attire being an essential element of the show. As alpaca owners we know that only Incan royalty were permitted to wear garments made of coveted vicuña fibre and equally only the finest silks, embroidered with golden thread and dyed with the most expensive dyes were the chosen fabrics of our monarchs to signal their superiority and status.

The historic coronation robes are steeped in history and worn in a specific order during the ceremony. The King will enter Westminster Abbey wearing the Robe of State, a magnificent scarlet robe followed by the Colobium Sindonis, a pure white robe designed to symbolise purity before God, this is worn for the most sacred moment of the ceremony, the anointment. Once anointed the Supertunica, a coat of golden silk is placed over the Colobium sindonis for the investiture. The King is crowned wearing another golden robe; the Robe Royal, or Pallium Regale, and finally at the end of the ceremony the newly crowned sovereign will exit the Abbey wearing the Imperial Robe; a 15lb, 6 1/2-meter velvet robe of deepest purple. That is a lot of costume changes! each representing a significant moment in the ceremony. It is thought that King Charles may utilise fewer of these historic robes in an attempt to promote a more modern monarchy, but he will still want to retain the essential pomp and pageantry key to the event and it is expected that the purple Imperial robe will certainly be worn.

The material of the cloth is not the only indicator of the status of these robes, the colour of the fabrics have an essential role in portraying rank and power. Gold of course plays a major part of this exhibition with many of the robes made of or embroidered with golden thread – the silken threads would have been hand dyed yellow and then wrapped in finely cut golden wires to make a shimmering fabric. However, the final robe worn is deep purple to represent the power and pre-eminence of the newly crowned monarch.

Historically golden thread and purple dye are the two most exclusive and expensive materials that a garment could have been made of and as such would be reserved for only the most important members of a society. Images of Roman emperors are synonymous with the colour purple due to vast expense of producing clothing made of such a colour. The purple dye used was so rare and so valuable that wearing it was reserved for the elite, eventually only the emperor was allowed to wear full garments of this colour.

Purple dye was literally worth more than its weight in gold and came to symbolise the wealth and power of the Roman Emperors, even wearing imitation shades of purple made with cheaper materials resulted in punishment. This dye was known as Tyrian purple, made from a particular sea snail native to the area now known as Lebanon and made by crushing thousands of sea shells – Mediterranean Murex. It took 10,000 Murex molluscs to make enough pigment to dye just one toga!

Due to its vast expense and rarity the colour purple became synonymous with royalty, power and wealth. Queen Elizabeth I created specific laws dictating the colours and fabrics that people were permitted to wear based on their social rank and wealth, and specifically forbad anyone except close members of the royal family to wear the colour purple.

Purple only became accessible to lower classes about a century and a half ago with the somewhat accidental creation of a purple compound by English chemist William Henry Perkin. Perkin was attempting to synthesize quinine to make an anti-malaria drug but noticed that the compound formed during one of his experiments could be used to dye fabrics purple. Perkins patented the dye and manufactured it making a fortune in the process. The colour was called Aniline or Perkin’s purple, but the deep association of royalty and purple continues and is the reason that to this day the final coronation Imperial robe is of deepest purple.

Tyrian purple pigment is still highly valued today, produced by just a handful of people around the world, each with their own secret techniques and still trades for eye watering prices! However, thankfully, it is possible to make a purple dye using natural materials without mashing up hundreds of sea snails or breaking the bank!

Logwood is a tree that grows abundantly in Central America and the West Indies and is grown and exported as a sustainable natural dye. The heartwood of the tree can be used as either shredded wood chips or powder and gives a wide range of beautiful purple dyes from light lavender to deep purple. To achieve good colours a mordant is needed for the dye to fix properly to fabric or yarn and colour will vary depending on the PH of the dye bath. For protein fibres like alpaca, an alum mordant is best.

Most probably the purple of our Tudor monarchs was created using a combination of cochineal overdyed with indigo rather than Tyrian purple, as access to the secrets of Tyrian dyeing was mainly lost with the fall of Constantinople in the 15th Century. Cochineal and Indigo would have both been extremely costly as they had to be imported and needed skilled dyers to create the desired purple and as such continued the elitist nature of purple as a colour worn by only the most powerful and wealthy in society.

However both cochineal and indigo are readily accessible today giving a fantastic range of reds, pinks, and blues that when combined produce varying shades of purple. The red of the cochineal comes from a female scale insect (Dactylopius coccus) that lives on a particular prickly pear cactus plant and is normally imported from South America, whilst the beautiful blues of Indigo are extracted from the leaves of the many varieties of indigo plant cultivated in tropical areas throughout the world.

Achieving purple using cochineal and indigo is a more complex process than using Logwood as firstly the yarn or fabric is dyed with cochineal and then overdyed using a indigo vat, but this method does create a more lightfast dye and although a long process the variation in colours is well worth the effort!

Understanding how royal purple was created and valued allows us to admire its historic importance and perhaps have greater appreciation for the work and thought behind these magnificent robes of state.

Annie Nickerson: Burnt Fen Alpacas

Annie teaches various alpaca textile courses on her farm in Norfolk, including an introduction to dyeing with natural dyes. Find full details of all her courses at www.burntfen.co.uk