Madder has been cultivated as a
dyestuff since antiquity in
Central Asia,
South Asia, and
Egypt, where it was grown as early as 1500 BC. Cloth dyed with madder root dye was found in the tomb of the
Pharaoh Tutankhamun and on an Egyptian tomb painting from the Graeco-Roman period, diluted with
gypsum to produce a pink color. It was also found in
ancient Greece (in
Corinth), and in Italy in the
Baths of Titus and the ruins of
Pompeii. It is referred to in the
Talmud as well as mentioned in writings by
Dioscorides (who referred to it as ἐρυθρόδανον, "erythródanon"),
Hippocrates, and other literary figures, and in artwork where it is referred to as
rubio and used in paintings by
J. M. W. Turner and as a color for ceramics. In Spain, madder was introduced and then cultivated by the
Moors. The production of a
lake pigment from madder seems to have been first invented by the ancient Egyptians. Several techniques and recipes developed. Ideal color was said to come from plants 18 to 28 months old that had been grown in
calcareous soil, which is full of lime and typically chalky. Most were considered relatively weak and extremely fugitive until 1804, when the
English dye maker George Field refined the technique of making a
lake from madder by treating it with
alum and an
alkali. The resulting madder lake had a less fugitive color Alizarin was discovered before purpurin, by heating the ground madder with acid and
potash. A yellow vapor crystallized into bright red needles: alizarin. This alizarin concentrate comprises only 1% of the madder root. Natural rose madder supplied half the world with red, until 1868, when its alizarin component became the first natural dye to be synthetically duplicated by
Carl Gräbe and
Carl Liebermann. Advances in the understanding of chemistry, such as chemical structures, chemical formulas, and elemental formulas, aided these Berlin-based scientists in discovering that alizarin had an
anthracene base. However, their recipe was not feasible for large-scale production; it required expensive and volatile substances, specifically
bromine.
William Perkin, the inventor of
mauveine, filed a patent in June 1869 for a new way to produce alizarin without bromine.). In turn, alizarin itself has now been largely replaced by the more light-resistant
quinacridone pigments originally developed at
DuPont in 1958. It is still manufactured in traditional ways to meet the demands of the fine art market. == Other names ==