The Benibana Museum (The Safflower Museum)
12. Technique of Benibana Dyes (紅花染めの技法 <色の出し方>)
Benibana contains the pigments of red and yellow, so red color is faded out easily against a sun light and it has a warm and soft elegant color.
To dye cloth clearly, yellow color must be got rid of as much as possible. A red color easily catches cotton or silk, but a yellow color is easy to dye silk and hard to cotton. By the quality of silk, hemp and cotton thickly dyed red turns pink or yellow.
- Discrimination of Coloring of Benibanas
- Yellow
- Dye with yellow pigment of benibana
- Faint red
- Dye once with red pigment of benibana
- Thick red
- Dye several times with red pigment of benibana
- Orange
- Dye several times with red pigment of benibana and after that put yellow color on it. (This is used for color fixing.)
- Rose
- Dye with red underneath and put the thinner dyeing liquid
of boiled chestnut bur. And finish with copper mordanting.
Reddish brown･･･Do the same procedure of Rose, but as for finish, use iron mordanting.
- Dye with red underneath and put the thinner dyeing liquid
of boiled chestnut bur. And finish with copper mordanting.
- Green
- Dye with yellow of benibana underneath and dye with indigo on its surface.