Dye ovens and dye wheels: I've got a clever plan

So I was trolling through my sources looking for period dye recipes, and one such source (the Plictho of Gioanventura Rosetti, c. 1548) not only told me what to put in with the fabric, but also instructed me to "give it four or five rounds on the turn wheel."

Wheel? What wheel?

That sounded super convenient for maintaining the constant motion that is vital for an evenly dyed piece, so I clearly had to have one.

This is an illustration from the Plictho showing dyers at work:


We can find a similar apparatus c. 1433, in a book depicting tradesmen at work (and an almost identical illustration from a 1425 edition of the same work): (f53v from Die Hausbucher der Nürnberger Zwölfbrüderstiftungen)

It doesn't look like the wheel you might have expected. Water wheels (about what I was picturing) are used to power more "wheely" wheels in use in e.g. fulling cloth and milling woad, etc. The dye wheel is less of a wheely looking wheel and more of a hand-cranked spit type device.

These illustrations feature another thing I immediately had to make: the "dye oven." It's a stone or brick structure with a fire built inside, and a metal vessel inset into the top (it's not a shallow pan - look at the 1433 illustration, and you'll see the bottom of the vat in the fire). This dye oven thing would support a very large, heavy dye vat filled with dye and fabric, and channel heat to the entire surface of the vat rather than concentrating it on the bottom like a pot hung over a fire would have. This seems to be an ideal structure for dyeing with madder, as it can have a fire lit in it to heat the bricks, then cleared out, leaving warm bricks, so that the madder would not boil and therefore turn brown.

A dyer with the former vat-over-open-fire method is sneaking around the margins of the Smithfield Decretals c. 1325. By 1425, the dye oven and dye wheel were iconic tools of the dyer. I would therefore theorize that they existed before that date, otherwise they wouldn't be obvious identifiers of a dyer. I personally think they would have showed up in the mid-14th century, because of the sudden labor shortage wrought by the Black Death. Laborers died in droves and consequently labor was more expensive. The dye oven and wheel ensure that the fire need not be fed as frequently and the cloth need not be agitated by so many workers (the Plictho illustration shows only one guy with a pole and one guy turning the wheel, as opposed to illustrations missing the wheel which seem to have more dudes with poles).

Dudes with poles c. 1482. British Library, Royal Ms 15 E. III f.269

The dye oven is essentially a bread oven with the top cut off and a vat inserted. Dye and bread ovens are illustrated both as smooth and as obviously made of some kind of stacked unit. Some extant bread ovens found in Slovakia were made of stacked quarried stone and covered in a clay mixture for further insulation, which would produce a smooth exterior. Variously, bricks were used to make kilns and ovens in other finds, even before they were typically used to build dwellings, etc.

I am investigating two methods of oven building: buying bricks, stacking them, and covering the resulting structure in a mixture of clay and sand, and also making my own bricks which will be stacked in the form of the oven without a clay covering (you don't need as much insulation to dye as you do to bake, because you can keep the fire going with most dyestuffs).

Master Tiberius Iulius Rufus has made his own kiln, so I picked his brain about how to make ovens and bricks. He has supplied a brick recipe: 50% silica sand, 20% fire clay, 20% red art clay, 10% local clay, straw, and water. This is mixed, stuffed into forms, taken out, air dried, and then fired. (This is also pretty similar in content to an analysis of extant bricks - maybe a little more sand.)

The dye wheel can be constructed pretty simply with wooden poles stuck in the ground (for the 1425 version - the 1548 version has wheel-holders built into the oven) with hooks stuck on them to support another pole with a handle on it.

Stay tuned for pictures!



A variety of images of dye vats, dye ovens, and other ovens can be found on my pinterest here

Works consulted include:
Plictho of Gioanventura Rosetti, c. 1548
The stone and Middle age ovens in Loess sites of Slovakia: Influences on their quality for food preparation, in Bread, Ovens and Hearths of the Past, by Danica Stassikova-Stukovska
Ancient Clay Bricks: Manufacture and Properties by F. M. Fernandes et al
The Mediæval Mason: An economic history of English stone building in the later Middle Ages and early modern times, by Douglas Knoop and G. P. Jones