Archaeologists who have studied the earliest surviving coloured fabrics and important ancient manuscripts have concluded that there were three types of natural dyes: vegetable or plant dyes, mineral dyes and insect or animal dyes.
Mineral dyes
Mineral dyes came from minerals found on the earth’s surface and in mines. Hematite for red, limonite for yellow and lazurite for blue were used to provide the necessary colours for textiles. By scratching the rocks’ surface, a powder was created, which after solving with water or oil, was ready to use. Because they were inorganic in nature, and do not degrade over time like plant or animal dyes, they can survive for years if sheltered.
Animal dyes
Another type of natural dyes came from animals – such as insects, lichens and shellfish. The most well-known insects that have been used during the ancient times are kermes and cochineal, which produced scarlet and crimson red accordingly. They reds that were extracted were so renowned that even now we use the same names to describe these shades.
Vegetable dyes
Vegetable dyes are made from leaves, bark or roots from trees and plants. They were the most used in antiquity as they were the easiest to find and develop. The most common dyes were made of madder for red, saffron and safflower for yellow and indigo for blue and blueish purple. Items dyed in indigo were considered luxurious, as they were hard to find.
Lichens were an important source of natural dye for the natives of North America, as they produced yellow dye by boiling lichens in water. Another type of dye from lichens (orchil dye) was also known to ancient Greeks and Romans, who used it in the place of the more expensive Tyrian purple. When comparing the two though, the orchil purple dye was not as colourfast as the Tyrian purple, and the end result was not as bright as the much coveted Tyrian purple.