Lincoln Green dye workshop 11am-1pm

Service Description

LINCOLN GREEN — COLOUR, PLACE & CRAFT Lincoln Green is one of Britain's most evocative historic textile colours, associated with the medieval city of Lincoln and, through centuries of storytelling, with Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Lincoln was an important centre of medieval wool and cloth production, renowned for the quality of its dyed textiles. The green associated with the city was not simply extracted from a green plant. Instead, dyers created green through the skilled layering of two natural colours: a strong yellow traditionally associated with weld (Reseda luteola) and blue produced from woad (Isatis tinctoria). Weld contains the yellow flavonoid luteolin, while woad produces the blue pigment indigotin. By layering these colours on wool, the dyer could create a spectrum of greens, from fresh yellow-green through to rich forest shades. Lincoln Green later became inseparable from the legend of Robin Hood. An early Robin Hood text, A Gest of Robyn Hode, describes his men exchanging their grey clothing for “Lyncolne grene”. No surviving medieval Lincoln dye recipe tells us precisely how one definitive Lincoln Green was produced, and its exact shade would have varied according to the plants, fibre, water, mordant, strength of the dye baths and skill of the dyer. In this workshop we will explore that history practically, using weld and indigo to reconstruct our own Lincoln Green palette. Rather than attempting to reproduce one supposedly definitive shade, we will use the process as medieval dyers did: building colour through layers and discovering how changing the balance between yellow and blue creates an extraordinary spectrum of greens.