Nineteenth Century Scarf

This early 19th century scarf is deceptively simple in its design: the ubiquitous floral border and field. To make it in the mordant printing technique, however, involved two different printing and dyeing operations; one for the red (with madder dyeing) and another for the yellow (with quercitron dyeing). Afterwards blue and green had to be printed directly onto the fabric. Contemporary consumers, though probably not familiar with the actual printing and dyeing practices, would have known that that particular colour combination would have been more expensive than scarves in red, black, and purple which only needed one madder dyebath.