Category Archives: Uncategorized

Pepper

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As I research my next book, I am continually drawn into new channels. Everything is interconnected.

When one thinks of the spice trade, we think of the more exotic spice like cinnamon or cardamon. Not lowly pepper. But pepper was extremely valuable. When the Salem merchantmen began sailing east, before they traded in cloth they traded in pepper. Carnes, the first Captain who sailed to Sumatra for pepper, brought home a cargo that made a 700% profit.

The enormous profits continued to the early 1800s, but fell victim to the pirates in the east.

Since pepper was easily portable, the sailors could carry trade something (butter was a big favorite) for a stash of pepper of their own. This could be traded at home for a little profit. In the 1980s, when the ship, The Mary Rose, was raised from the ocean floor, almost every sailor’s corpse carried a supply of pepper. This ship sank in 1545.

Cloth and Piracy

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What? How could these two disparate topics be connected? Well, in the early 1700s, there was a pirate called ‘Calico Jack” Rackam. A lesser known and not very successful pirate, Calico Jack and his crew plied their trade in the Caribbean. In 1719, during one of the many wars between France and England, they accepted a pardon from Britain. Privateering was really piracy under another name, but on the right side of the law. However, this war ended in February of 1720. Rackam and his crew, which now numbered two women among them, went back to their old ways. With the ship ‘William’, they started capturing ships again and were soon declared ‘Pirates”.

The two women, by the way, were Anne Bonney and Mary Read. Anne Bonney left her husband to sail with Calico Jack. Mary Read, also on board, had disguised herself as a man to join the crew.

They were captured and in November tried and convicted. Anne Bonney and Mary Read were spared from hanging due to pregnancy. Mary Read and her unborn child died in prison but Anne Bonney and her child (probably fathered by Calico Jack) were released and disappeared.

Now, where did Jack get his unusual nickname? Well, in 1700 the import of calico into England and the Colonies was forbidden. (See previous post). One of the theories is that Jack got his name from smuggling the popular cloth.

Who would have guessed that cloth could be so interesting and have such a checkered (ha, ha) history.

Imported India Fabrics – circa 1796

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We forget I think, in these days of synthetics, that to the affluent in the US coastal cities, there were many fabric choices. Of course all were natural fabrics. And I say coastal cities since in the farming communities and certainly on the frontier families were dependent upon homespun for their clothing. Homespun that was usually home dyed as well. In Williamsburg these dyes would have been imported: the fustics, indigo (homegrown as well as imported from the Phillippines), and cochineal. But further from the coast, the thrifty housewife would have used many dyes collected from the garden and forest around her, as per previous posts.

Many of the imported fabrics are unfamiliar to us now. A search for definitions does not always turn up anything. Here are some of the fabrics imported into the new USA in the 1790s.

Nankeen – A yellow fabric made from a yellowish cotton. Later on, the cotton was the ordinary white and the fabric was dyed to achieve the yellow color.

Shalloon – A lightweight twill of wool or worsted usually used for the lining of coats e.g. The coats of the British Army.

Ticklenburg – a coarse mixed linen fabric (mixed with tow once assumes), to be sold in the West Indies. I suspect this cloth was destined for slave clothing.

Calimancoes – A variety of worsted.

Sprigged Mecklenburgs – a variety of cotton that looks like dotted swiss.

Calico, of course. Even the name is a corruption of Calicut, the town where this particular type of fabric was purchased. In India, the process for making printed cloth with wooden blocks and dye was developed in the 11th century. By changing the mordants, one dye would produce two colors0, usually red and black. By the 12th century, these printed fabrics were already exports to the Middle East.

In 1783, a process was developed in England for using copper printing. More on that in the next post.

Ahoy me maties, sailor talk in ordinary speech

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Idioms are colorful parts of speech and English is full of them. They make little sense to a non-native speaker and contribute to the difficulty of learning this language.

And speaking of learning, let’s talk about learning the ropes, an expression that dates from the era of the sailing ships over 200 years ago. Ropes controlled the sails and a new sailor had to know which rope to choose from 10 or more, in the dark, and during a crisis. He had to ‘learn the ropes’.

He also had to cross the line; i.e. the Equator.

What about ‘at loggerheads’? Loggerheads were hollow spheres of iron at each end of a shaft. Once heated, they were used to melt tar in buckets. The loggerheads could never come together, hence the expression.

‘Chew the fat’? The heavy mastication required to eat the beef that had been brined for months on end.

And my personal favorite: ‘piping hot’. If you sat down to eat to as soon as the proper pipe sounded, the food was still hot.

In the 1700s, particularly the late 1700s, New England sailors were opening up trade with the East and bringing back pepper from Sumatra, spices from the Spice Islands, tea and silk from China, and cloth (madras, chintz, calico and other cottons such as seersucker and nankeen) from India. Whalers set off from Nantucket, Salem and Bedford and was a strong industry although it reached it’s peak later in the early nineteenth century.

Hard to believe but this country was already part of a global economy.

The Question of Black Dye

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I don’t care for black and never use it when I am dyeing. It is a color that requires care in use. It simply takes over. Overdyeing usually results in a mottled black so using black dye means strictly controlling it.

But of course black was used, in fact it was required. Black was already the color of mourning by Colonial times, even if the rules decreeing social behavior weren’t as strict as they became later on in the Victorian era.

Depending upon the mordants, some of the natural dyes produce charcoal. Staghorn Sumac, for example, which dyes fiber a soft brown, (and does not need to be mordanted since it is full of tannin) will dye charcoal if the fiber is mordanted with iron water.

Black walnut and black walnut do not dye black either, despite the names. Black willow bark (which will not dye cotton – in fact, many natural dyes do not do well on cotton) produces a light brown to a rose tan upon wool when mordanted with alum. Black walnut, which is full of tannin and does not require additional mordanting, produces a rich brown.

So where does one find black? The dye of choice came from logwood, a tree that is native to Mexico and Central America. The British successfully propagated the species to Jamaica and the West Indies as well. Logwood was sold by apothacaries and in general stores, usually as logs since customers feared adulteration. However, a Pennsylvania newspaper advertised in 1798 that chipped logwood ( produced by Philadelphia prison inmantes ) could be had at reasonable rates.

Only the reddish heartwood was used. The chipped wood was dampened and then gathered in a sack and immersed in the dye kettle. After boiling for twenty minutes, the sack was removed and the fabric was submerged into the dyebath. Logwood could be used on silk, wool and yes, cotton, with the hues varying ( as usual) depending upon the mordant. Logwood could be used to dye textiles navy blue and was a much cheaper alternative to indigo, although not as colorfast.

Black was a compund color and other dyes such as fustic were used to produce black. It too was not wonderfully colorfast. However, anyone who has ever worn black jeans and watched them fade can attest to the poor colorfastness of current black synthetic dyes as well.

Logwood was important for dyeing right up to the beginning of World War II.

Red Cabbage and Pokeberries

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Both red cabbage and pokeberries produce beautiful red shades. The problem is, as it is so often, colorfastness. Items dyed with pokeberries quickly fade in light. I read in a contemporary book, Harvesting Color, however, that mordanting pokeberries with vinegar makes the dye colorfast. A modern dyer experimented with pokeberries until she found a method that works. I have yet to try this but plan to this fall.

The recipe included in this book is:

Ratio of 25:1 for pokeberries to fabric. Presoak fabric in vinegar. Mash berries until they have all been crushed. Fill pot with enough water to cover the berries and still alow yarn to move freely. Add 1/2 C vinegar for every 1 gal water. The PH has to be 3.5; pretty acid. Heat the dye pot on medium but do not boil, and let steep for about an hour. Strain. Prewet yarn, preferably in an acid bath (1/4 C vinegar in the water bath). Add the prewetted yarns to te dye pot and let them soak about 2 hours or overnight. Hang the yarn without rinsing for at least 20 minutes and up to half a day and then rinse excess color.

Red cabbage is cut up.  If you prefer a more blue color, add salt. Otherwise the color will be pink. Fibers must first be soaked in a tannin bath (acorns!) and then mordanted with alum.

Soak the fiber you will be dyeing in water for an hour or overnight. Fill the dye pot with enough water to cover the fabric and brint the water to a simmer. Put the cut up cabbage into the pot, bring the heat up to a simmer, and simmer for at least 20 minutes or until the cabbage leaves lose their color and become a light pale pink. Strain out the cabbage. Bring the dye back to a simmer and add the presoaked fiber. Simmer for about 1/2 an hour.

The dye is now a purple lavender. If you prefer pink, stir in the vinegar or lemon juice now. Salt will change the dye to dark blue. Soak the fiber until it reaches the desired shade.Rinse and hang to dry.

Natural dye colors tend to be more muted than the synthetics but many are also much less toxic and make use of easily obtainable materials.

Yellow dyes

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Yellow should be one of the easier colors to obtain, right? After all, aren’t a lot of flowers yellow?

Well, yes. I can think of two plants right off the bat that grow in the US: showy goldenrod and tickseed sunflower, that produce yellow dyes. That fabric must be premordanted with alum – and yes, alum was used in Colonial times for a variety of purposes. The tickseed produces a strong orange but the goldenrod gives a bright sunny yellow.

The flowers must be collected. For tickseed, put in hot water but do not simmer or boil, for 1 – 2 hours. Strain out the flowers and add the cloth or fiber. Soak for an hour or so. The process for goldenrod is similar, except that the water should be simmering and the flower simmered in the water for 1 – 2 hours. Once the plant material is removed, the fiber can be added and simmered in the dye bath again, until the desired color is attained.

In Colonial times, however, the source for yellow was something called ‘fustic’. Never heard of fustic? Well, it was so important that at one time the English enacted a law stating that the logs from which fustic is obtained could not be shipped into any Colony except by British ships. Fustic is derived from the wood of a tropical American tree (Chlorophora tinctoria), a member of the mulberry family. Sometimes the wood was called dyer’s mulberry.

It arrived in the form of logs which were chipped into small fragments. Usually, after being tied in a bag, they were soaked in water for two or three days before going into the dye bath.

Fustic was usually mordanted with alum and cream of tartar (yes, the same stuff one uses in a scratch cake). It was not a bright yellow, and some Colonial sources describe it as faintly orange (fustic was also used for drab colors) but it stood up well to washing and light. Fustic was also used regularly in compound colors: with indigo to make green, with red to make red oranges and so on.

Not bad for a material most of us have never heard of.

ALA and More

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I left for the American Library Conference on June 21 and was in California until June 28. Although I have attended many many ALA conferences, this was the first time I attended as both a librarian and a writer. And the word of the day is Hectic!

I usually run from class to class. This time I missed a few offerings I would have liked to attend since I was signing books at a book store. On Saturday I signed at Mysteries to Die for in Thousand Oaks. On Sunday we drove to Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego. Both of these shops are niche shops, catering to a specific clientele. Mysteries, obviously, but the Mysterious Galaxy also includes Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy.

The Following week I visited Book Carnival in Orange County. No talk this time, but I signed stock. And since I was invited to return next year when my new book comes out, I hope to speak there in the future. This shop specialized in Romantic Suspense as well as Mysteries.

From a librarian’s point of view, a clear indication of how these genres can overlap. From a writer’s perspective, a reminder of how much bookstores like these do to sell one’s books. They all feel under pressure, from the Big Box book stores and from Amazon. I really enjoyed speaking to the faithful who came to hear me and hope to be invited to do more.

On the closing day of the conference, I signed at the Macmillan booth. Since a lot of these people were fellow librarians, I know it took longer than it should have. I talked to everyone! By and large, A Simple Murder has garnered a lot of positive attention. I feel both lucky to have this experience and humbled by it.

 

A Heavy Drinking Age – Shakers and Spirits

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Spirits, or distilled liquor, were consumed so enthusiastically during the 1790’s (and before and after) that tourists and important men alike began to decry the habit. The U. S. was a nation of drunkards. Even George Washington, a whiskey distiller himself, referred to the heavy drinking as the ruin of half the workman.

Where did we get into such a pickle? Well, part of it was cultural. Cotton Mather (he of Puritan fame) declared “Drink itself to be a creature of God.”

Water tended to be dangerous. It could be contaminated or just plain unappetizing. In Natchez water from the Mississippi River had to be set aside so the sediment could settle. (Yum!) Milk was unpasturized and if the cow ate jimson weed it was poisoness. Alcoholic beverages, and I include hard cider, were safe. Also, corn and rye could be transported from the western frontier (like Pittsbugh in 1793) to the east in the form of whiskey and sold for four or more times the price for the grain itself. And without much more cost in transportation.

In times where the food supply could be erratic. alcoholic beverages accounted for a significant proportion of the day’s calories. In the early days of the eighteenth centure, the favorite tipple was rum; sweet and alcoholic. But after the Revolution, it was declared unpatriotic and people switched to whiskey. Rum was made from molasses and while distilled in Maine and Massachusetts at first, began to be distilled in the West Indies. Whiskey, on the other hand, was All-American; the grain grown in the US and distilled here as well.

Everyone drank. Ben Franklin is quoted as saying If God wanted men to drink water He would not have given him an elbow to bend the wine glass. Toddlers were put to sleep with whiskey or given the sugary residue in the bottom of the glass. (This makes my hair stand on end!) But of course there was a double standard. Women were not to been seen intoxicated.

Some primary sources quote men like John Adams complaining about the length it took to get something built. One day’s work earned a man enough to stay drunk all week. So they worked one day out of seven.

As might be expected, early opposition to drink came from the Quakers, most particulary from Anthony Benezet who attacked slavery and rum at the same time. Quakers had already begun to practice restraint before him and by 1777 they were ordered to no longer sell distilled spirits nor to distill them. The Methodists saw drinking as a barrier to purifying the church and society so they joined the Quakers. The Shakers, as a splinter group, also practised retraint and drank mainly water (that they trusted). The Shakers were famous for their cider which went from ‘kind’ to hard’ very rapidly in an age before refrigeration.

The chorus against such heavy drinking began to grown, spurred by Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Philadelphia doctor who concentrated upon the health benefits of abstinence. Another doctor, a Dr. Thomas Calawalder, had identified rum as the cause of an illness called the Dry Gripes. The rum that was aged in lead casks caused lead poisoning. Interestingly enough, the doctors recommended drinking cider (which is still alcoholic) and beer (which is more complicated to make than you might think.

For more information, both depressing and fascinating, read “Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition” by W. J. Rorabaugh.

Hancock Shaker Village

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Because the first Shaker community was established in New York (they called it Niskayuna – a piece of it now lies under Albany Airport), there are several museum villages within easy driving distance of New York.  The only village still active is Sabbathday Lake near New Gloucester, Maine which still has four living members. Hancock Village is in Pittsfield, MA, a few miles over the New York State Border and is set up as a museum. Although I found it a little difficult to get too, mainly because the GPS had problems with the address, it is well worth a day trip.

This village was clearly wealthier than Sabbathday Lake. (Maine).  If one researches the Shakers and a picture of a round barn comes up, that is Hancock Village. The round barn is unique.

round barn

 

The large structure, painted dark red as all the work buildings were, is especially interesting. The Shakers harnessed a stream to provide water power for a machine shop on one side and laundry on the other.

Machine Shop and laundry

Water power mechanized a variety of machines and helped wash clothing in the 18th century. They also invented a process to create wrinkle free clothing; zinc chloride was steamed into the fabric. Another early invention by the Shakers.

The Museum is laregely solar powered and the Shakers were ahead of the rest of the world in that too, although instead of panels they relied on passive solar.

The Museum Village also has a nice cafe – we had a great lunch there – and a good shop.