Pezette, Clothlet, of Tüchlein?

A clothlet instead of a tube of paint These days, as painters, we have it very easy, we buy a […]

These days, as painters, we have it very easy, we buy a tube of paint and can get straight to work. No searching for the right raw materials, no grinding large pieces of mineral and no complicated processes to obtain the right pigments. That was not the case in the Middle Ages. Anyone reading medieval recipe books soon realised that it was really quite a job for the illuminator to make and preserve the paint. On the other hand, the vegetable dyes used by illuminators, especially in the late Middle Ages, were hardly available in winter. After all, cornflowers, poppies, blueberries, buckthorn, and elderberries do not grow in winter to name a few.

The solution invented for this was as ingenious as it was convenient. Small pieces of linen were dipped several times in the squeezed-out dye and dried. When you wanted to use the colour, you cut off a piece of the fabric and put it in the binder. In this way, the dyer had access all winter to colours that in principle could only be made in summer. The cloths were also very suitable to take to the next workshop of the illuminator and could thus travel long distances. In the literature we come across the following names for these coloured cloths: Pezettes (It.) Dra-peau/ Drapel (Fr.) Clothlet (Eng.) and Tüchlein (Du.). (1)

The method of preparing these cloths was quite simple. You first gathered your required plant material: petals, berries, seeds and at the right time. For using petals, it was advised to do so in the morning when they were still fresh. Furthermore, you depended on the time of harvesting, berries had to ripen first but were also used unripe like the Buckthorn.

Buckthorn

The material was worked in the mortar with the pestle and the juice was strained and put on a dish. Then pieces of linen were placed in this squeezed juice.

Iris petals with alum.

Sometimes the pieces of linen were first treated with lime or with a solution of alum. After this pretreatment, the pieces of cloth were first dried before being dipped in the dye several times. In the case of Folium (2), a purple-blue dye from the plant: Chrozophora Tinctoria, the pieces of cloth were also treated with ammonia vapour from urine. To use the cloths, it was only necessary to soak them in a binder, clarified egg white or gum arabic.

Gum arabic in lumps.
Clarified egg white, fresh on the left and some older on the right.
Pieces of cloth soaking in the juice iris leaves.
After drying, the cloth pieces can be stored between paper.

The word Folium used above is commonly used in recipes books and painters’ manuals but the word can cause some confusion.

It may refer to the plant itself, the Chrozophora tinctoria. However, the word can also be used as a generic name for all the pieces of coloured cloth prepared in the above-mentioned manner. This is due to the origin of the word folium, plural ‘folia’ which is the late-classical/medieval Latin word for a leaf in a medieval handwritten (codex – manuscript) or printed book. And because the clothslets were mostly kept among the leaves of manuscripts, they soon all got the name: folium.

Clothlets stored between paper.

The use of clothlets


For what were these colours all used? In medieval recipe books, we come across several indications for the use of these (3) ‘clothlets’. Below are some possibilities for their use.

For illuminating .

For drawing with pen.

For filigree work around the Initials. (Penwork Initials).

For applying shadows.

For painting foliage.

For illuminating

In his work the Handbook for the Artist: Il Libro dell ‘Arte, Cennino Cennini (1360-1427) writes the following about these colours:

‘It is likewise true that there are certain colours without substance, known as dyes, and they are made in every colour. You only have to take a small piece of this dye (clothlet) of whatever colour it is dyed or coloured in, and put it in a glazed plate or cup. Add some gum and it is ready to use.’

In the Arte Illuminandi an anonymous work from the 14th century, a mixture of Folium with lead white is described for raising colours. Furthermore, this work writes about The use of clothlet colours:

‘Then if you want to illuminate with heliotrope cloth (5) (= Folium), take as much of that cloth as you need and put it in a sea shell and temper it with well worked clarea of eggs. And do not squeeze out the juice but let the soaked cloth stay in the shell like cotton in an ink horn with the ink. And soak it with water or with clarea (4)diluted water when it dries’.

It is further known that Lapis Lazuli was worked with a glacis of (purple)Folium to give the blue colour Lapis lazuli more of a violet glow but also for applying shadows. It was also added to the blue colour Azurite.

Above, experiments with the colour folium and lapis lazuli.

‘Working with sky blue”. Take azurite, rub it very finely and temper it with the clarea of eggs treated with a sponge, and take some heliotrope cloth (Folium) tempered with this clarea, and treat as with ultramarine blue. And if the azurite is pale, rub it very finely on the plate along with some lead white and then temper it with the clarea of eggs in the same way as previously described and soak in some violet cloth. And proceed as previously described’.

From: Arte Illuminandi XXII

For drawing with coloured ink

An indication that clothlet colours were also used for drawing is found in chapter X of Il libro dell ‘Arte by Cinnino Cennini.

‘You can also draw on sheep parchment or paper. If, after you have drawn with the marker, you want to develop the drawing further, you apply ink, that is, with two drops of ink in as much water as can go into a nutshell. And shadow with a brush made of ermine tail, rather blunt and almost always dry. And depending on the shadows, you make the washes progressively blacker in this way: with more and more drops of ink. And you can also work in a similar way, and use shadows with colour and dyes like the book illuminators, the colours diluted with gum or with clarified egg whites, which have been well whipped and settled.’

For filigree work

Pen work or also called filigree work often in red and blue and sometimes violet.

By filigree work we meant penwork, the delicate lines in red and blue around the initials. It eventually became its own form of decoration alongside painted decorations. A expert in this field: Patricia Stirnemann writes: ‘During the third quarter of the XIIIth century, penwork decorations began to use the colour purple in the Parisian illuminator’s milieu and would remain so until the XIVth century’.

Purple, violet colours were highly sought after and the name Folium is common. This colour is mainly linked to the Chrozophora Tinctoria but there were other purplish/violet suppliers too. We think for example of Orseille moss a lichen that gives a beautiful deep shade of purple.

Orseille moss, (Roccella tinctoria).

Based on a recipe from le Livre d’art de Colmar 1478, Doris Oltrogge believes that there is another supplier for the purple, namely; Aconitum napellus or Delphinium .

In this post, I will leave this for now and it may be something for another time. For now I want to focus mainly on Folium derived from Chrozophora tinctoria.

Other vegetable dyes for clothlet colours were made from: Irises, buckthorn, blackberries , cornflowers, broom, poppies, elderberries, rhubarb and blueberries. This range of colours greatly enriched the palette of the illuminator. It allowed one to apply beautiful thin layers over existing colours (glazing) and thus nuance the colours. The downside is that they are not very lightfast. This was of less importance for manuscripts because the miniatures were relatively well protected from daylight. After all, they were much closed and thus protected.

(1) Tüchlein has another meaning besides the one mentioned above. It then refers to a pictorial work in which paint is applied to a textile support that is only thinly prepared with glue or not prepared at all. The surface of the painting remains pliable and the works can be rolled up and carried around. These works were popular in Germany, the Netherlands and Italy.

(2) Folium Dye derived from the plant Chrozophora tinctoria which can produce three colours: red, purple, and blue, depending on acid or alkaline additive. In recipe books, this plant is also called ‘tournesol’ because this plant faces the sun. It is the name of this plant tournesol that is used in medieval recipes for the process of cloth colouring, by the word the technique is mainly meant.

N.B. this is not the French translation of the word familiar to us: sunflower.

(4) Clarea Clare or clarified protein. See my article on this. https://arteilluminandi.nl/nl/recepten/clarea-geklaard-eiwit/

(5) Heliotrope derived from: heliotropium tricoccum and is a synonym for chrozophora tinctoria. In the literature we also come across the word: maurelle des teinturiers, they always refer to the same plant.

Cloth colours kept in a box. It is wise to keep them as dark as possible. All organic colours are very sensitive to light.
Beautiful transparent colours with Iris green and Folium. Iris green is a little dark but can be mixed with saffron to a beautiful light green colour.
Irisgreen with glair.
Saffron and Folium in clarified egg white.

If you want to make your own colours, there is plenty to do with these plant colours. It is really special to discover what is possible with all these beautiful plants and flowers. So they first give their beauty in summer and then also let us enjoy them in winter.