Historical dyeing

Nearly all of the historical clothing we use in our depiction are dyed and made by hand! Our member Tineke Kleijn achieves beautiful, even colours from a variety of natural dyes and pigments. When dyeing our own clothing, we use plants that would have been available in early medieval Frisia. Some plants would only have been available in certain areas of Frisia – such as dyers madder (Rubia tinctorum: red) for the terpen-area and dyers broom (Genista tinctoria: yellow) for West-Frisia –, whilst others would have been available throughout the whole of Frisia – such as woad (Isatis tinctoria: blue), weld (Reseda luteola: yellow) and different kinds of tree bark and nuts (brown). Some vegetables would also have been used for dyeing, like onions – which give a warm yellow to orange hue. The use of some of those dyes and hues are known from dye-analyses from archaeological finds. For example, the Rasquert, Aalsum and Oostrum hats found in the terpen-area have decorative stitching which was dyed red with dyers madder and the Dokkum-Berg Sion cap was dyed in a deep brown hue. It’s also known that one of the pieces of fabric on the Bernuthsfeld tunic in Ost-Friesland (Germany) was dyed yellowish-green with birch leaves. These finds attest to how colourful the early middle ages might have been!