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For reference, here's all three of those dyes next to each other, on the same wool tapestry [0,1]—and also the black made by mixing them together. Says [2]: "Blue and black are the most stable dyes; the bright blue sky, woven with indigotin-containing dye (probably woad), has barely faded over the centuries. To achieve brown or black, a combination of madder, weld, and an indigotin-containing dye such as woad was used."

[0] https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/467654 ("The Unicorn Surrenders to a Maiden (from the Unicorn Tapestries)")

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unicorn_Tapestries

[2] https://sci-hub.se/10.1086/met.45.41558055 ("Three Fragments of the “Mystic Capture of the Unicorn” Tapestry")

edit: Here's an article [3] about the digitization story of these tapestries (presumably what's used in that hi-res zoomable image in [0]): "“It took us three months of computation,” Gregory said. “We should have just dropped it.”"

[3] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/04/11/capturing-the-... ("Capturing the Unicorn")

One can fairly reliably date adoption of a flag to before or after the invention of synthetic lightfast dyes by whether it incorporates colours other than red, white, and blue.

That doesn't sound right; synthetic dyes didn't exist until the mid-19th century and there's lots of other flag colors from way before that. Just a few of the major ones:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Mughal_Empire (Mughal Empire; green, yellow; 17th century)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Prussia#Gallery (Prussia; black, yellow; 15th century)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Holy_Roman_Empire... (Holy Roman Empire; black, yellow; 14th century)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraldry_of_León#Medieval_stan... (Kingdom of León; purple; 12th century)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasid_Caliphate (Abbasid Caliphate; black; 8th century)

Interesting; I'll have to check these out. Up until now the exception I had been aware of was the Dutch flag, which in theory had (16th century) been blue, white, orange, but in practice is flown with blue, white, red.

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I think part of the issue here is distinguishing flags (flown by many people almost all the time) from banners/standards (flown by a small group that can afford to replace them often, only on certain occasions).

So the HRE had a black/gold banner, but when they needed flags, they reached for red/white. (and Muhammad is said to have had a rāya in black but a ʿalam in white; this theory would predict that Muhammad's personal unit would fly the black banner, but his troops in general would have flown white flags)

Then again, maybe black should be added to the basis set (what would this have been? indigo+madder? or after 1500, indigo+cochineal?)

https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ch-war.html#desc has a chronological list with many pre-1800 blacks, but only two anachronistic choices. (Uri:1291:gold/black, Schaffhausen:1501:green/black, although I should confirm the latter; I'd have expected* gold/black here as well and bet the green is post-Napoleonic) [EDIT: Indeed, now that I read more closely, the colours on the list are indeed post-Napoleonic, and the dates given are only used for sort order. It might be worth looking through some old artwork to see what the pre-1800 colour choices were. EDIT 2: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlachtkapelle_Sempach#/media... shows battle flags exactly equivalent to heraldic designs, but was painted ~250 years after the event depicted, so I'm not sure how reliable it may be.]

That having taken care of Prussia, we're left with León and the Mughals. León the city and León the province both use noticeably redder colours than the purpure of the heraldry of León the kingdom, and the Mughal moss green seems to have been more a banner than a flag, flown infrequently enough to use non-lightfast colours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Mughal_Empire#:~:...

Maybe I should say "usually" instead of "fairly reliably", but the exceptions have thus far been reasonably exceptional.

* fun fact: the penis of Bern's bear is hilighted in red, but that of Schaffhausen's ram retains the background gold.

Hmmm: officially it seems banners are hung from the top while flags are pole-mounted from the side. In attempting to look up rāya and ʿalam I did run across various statements about when they should be furled and unfurled; I guess I need better vocabulary for all this...

Anyone have enough vexillology to know what the appropriate search terms would be for a "widely replicated, continuously displayed, cloth-based political symbol"?

I'm wondering about the assumption that flags were "flown by many people almost all the time".

I believe the madder root can dye fabrics orange too [0,1,2]—I don't know anything about the chemical process, or whether this is what old orange flags (like the Dutch) actually used. But it does look like a more muted color; the deeper red/crimson is what you get from using more (?) of this dyestuff, and is more saturated and vibrant. Maybe your thesis is basically right: though many fabric colors were available, people gravitated towards the ones that produced the most vibrant, striking hues—i.e. favoring red over orange. At least for ostentatious purposes like state flags.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubia#/media/File:Naturally_dy... ("Skeins of yarn colored with dye from madder root, Rubia tinctorum")

[1] https://localcolordyes.com/2013/11/29/madder-the-inexhaustib... ("Madder the Inexhaustible Root–Part One: Orange")

[2] https://localcolordyes.com/2014/01/04/madder-the-inexhaustib... ("Madder the Inexhaustible Subject Matter")

I agree that many colours were available, but I don't think it was gravitating to vibrant, striking, hues so much as gravitating to lightfast hues. I've spent a lot of the past decade at or over 1'500m in a relatively sunny area, and even with modern colours, anything that's outside for several years tends to wind up looking like someone selected a single channel in Photoshop: faded to either red/white or blue/white.

I still have a black T shirt I bought at a 711 in Tokyo in 2007. It is the only black T shirt I own that doesn’t fade. Anyone know what magic is involved?

> It is the only black T shirt I own that doesn’t fade

Is it synthetic?

> Anyone know what magic is involved?

White magic.

That's going to annoy any old school Goths out there!

I shall write a stern LiveJournal post about this!

If I recall, a good black suit color is actually midnight blue, since a plain black color actually looks green in light

Shouldn’t a truly black suit, by definition, not reflect any (noticeable) colour in the presence of light? I haven’t really noticed my black suits reflecting green.

The way a color looks can depend greatly on context and expectations, for example on clothes sometimes a very slight blue tinge can make things look whiter

Midnight blue is common dinner jacket (tux) color if you want a very-black look in evening lighting. It has a blacker-than-black effect in the right environment.

""...the bog-common blue pigment, to dye fabric to the darkest possible midnight tint. Then a second dye, typically a red (madder) or yellow (weld), would be added over the top to eliminate the blue tinge.""

I've occasionally wondered about dyes, their stability, and how they were fixed pre modern chemistry (before early-to-mid 19th C., Perkins et al), for me the practice of dyeing and its fixing process is a bit of a black art.

Mind you, my experience at dyeing stuff is rather limited and I haven't attempted it in while. I mostly come at it from the other end when trying to get clothes clean and dyes either run or change color in the process.

For instance, I had several pairs of almost identical navy blue work shorts made by two different manufacturers (the colors were essentially identical from each manufacturer). On one occasion I put two pairs of rather dirty shorts into a prewash stain remover to soak overnight, each pair was from a different manufacturer. The stain remover did a good job on both at removing stains but it turned one pair to a bright lairy magenta color whilst the color of the other remained completely unaltered. The magenta pair was so bright that it was rendered useless (I could do without the catcalls).

A second similar incident occurred with a high-vis safety shirt colored florescent yellow and black. The yellow remained unaffected but the black turned a mottled darkish magenta color (it was still wearable however). Also, I've noticed other black clothing, T-shirts etc., will often tend towards a blackish magenta on harsh washing. It seems thus that we still have a problem dyeing deep black—or at least keeping it that color without it getting dull, dowdy and slightly shifting in hue.

Although I have a little knowledge of dyes and pigments from chemistry, indigo, azo, mordant red, etc., I've little idea what dyes are used for black other than it seems to be at least a two-color process. Perhaps things haven't changed as much as I'd thought (right, we know indigo has been with us for millennia but I'm a bit surprised we've still a problem with black). Is anyone up-to-date about dying stuff black?

Edit: BTW, I've noticed that when trying to remove black ballpoint pen stains from shirt pockets with solvents such as ethanol that the color upon dilution is often not black but rather dirty shades of a magenta/bluish color. Seems we've a similar problem here.

Some paractioners of Japanese martial arts wear a hakama, a sort Japanese trousers (not a great description this, have a look online). The tradionalists go for a proper indigo hakama which absolutley "bleeds" it's colour to the annoyance of practice partners.

Check out the care instructions from one traditional hakama manufacturer

https://iwataco.com/about_hakama#care

Thanks for that link. Having seen Japanese martial arts I was vaguely aware of what practitioners wore although I had no idea they were called 'hakama'. In fact, until I saw the link (having not thought about it), I'd assumed they were 'jet-black'—if I may use that term here.

Indigo is notorious for fading—its deemed virtue—but what I'm surprised about is how deep a blue it is here (its deeper than the bluest of unwashed denim). I wonder if any other dark dyes or pigments are added to increase the blackness.

I'm notorious for getting very grubby when stripping machines down for maintenance, etc. so I'm familiar with getting 'black' oil and grease stains out of clothes, it's very difficult and in some cases impossible. The black in oils and grease comes primarily from metal oxides and sometimes graphite, these aren't dyes as such but are in effect pigments.

Some oxides/pigments can be very black (almost neutral) and some of their fine particulates lodge mechanically (and often tenaciously) in the fibers and can stay there permanently (a little like a tattoo in human skin). That said, only a 'small' percentage of a pigment will remain fixed to the fibers but what stays there does so permanently (like carbon black in printer's ink a mechanical mechanism (the binder) is need to hold it there). I'm now curious, perhaps some of these very black materials are a combination of a black substrate pigment buffered with either azo blues and or indigo.

Just a thought.

Indigo is perceived more traditional then black, some places allow indigo, some demand.

By the way, indigo bleeding is not limited to washing, the colour actually rubs off during training.

It is turned around and seen a virtue since your garment becomes uniquely yours as it fades.

Right, somewhere in my past I got the impression that the original reason (before it became fashionable) for why manufacturers started pre-washing jeans was to stop the problem of indigo rubbing off onto furniture, chair seats etc. I recall when I was a kid before the pre-washing era started that the labels on some jeans advised that (a) jeans are to be washed before wearing and (b) they could shrink up to 5% after washing (i.e. buy a sloppy fit).

My mother insisted that jeans be washed first as she warned that I'd be in dead trouble if I got blue patches on her light beige lounge suite. This was a bit of a ritual, blue jeans first had to be washed and then only worn outside until the second wash, brown and black jeans only had to be washed once!

Re indigo fading, even now jeans manufacturers advise not to wash denim until really necessary so as to develop one's own characteristic fade marks. My point about very black materials and pigments was broader than just the hakama, materials such as black felt hats, women's dead-black shawls, and men's monkey suits, black parchment paper, etc. These are as black as the current technology permits—whatever it is.