Making Color

William Henry Perkin (1838–1907) Self-portrait photo at age 14 Courtesy of the Chemical Heritage Foundation

Until the mid-1800s, all dyes came from natural sources, such as insects, roots, or minerals. Producing them was difficult and expensive.

In 1856, an 18-year-old English chemist, William Henry Perkin, accidentally discovered one of the first synthetic dyes. In search of a treatment for malaria, Perkin experimented with coal tar, a thick, dark liquid by-product of coal-gas production. His experiment failed but left behind an oily residue that stained silk a brilliant purple. He called the dye mauveine.

Perkin’s purple changed history. He applied for a patent and abandoned the lab for the path of manufacturing. He paved the way for modern chemistry to move into industrial applications, and indirectly led to advances in modern medicine, explosives, photography, and plastics.

“Milking” Plicopurpura pansa, Oaxaca, Mexico. © Fulvio Eccardi	Cotton yarn with tixinda dye, 2012 Pinotepa de Don Luis, Oaxaca, Mexico Gift of Marilyn Murphy, www.clothroads.com
Sea snails like these are found around the world. When poked (milked) or crushed, they secrete a substance that was used for making purple dye as early as 1570 BC. Thousands of snails were needed to color a single robe, and for centuries purple dye was more valuable than silver and worn only by royalty.	Mixtec weavers in Oaxaca, Mexico, color locally grown cotton with natural dyes — including the rare purple tixinda, extracted from the Plicopurpura pansa mollusk. The introduction of synthetic dyes and the decline of mollusk populations have greatly reduced the production of natural purple dye.
Anthracite coal National Museum of Natural History, Department of Mineral Sciences Gift of Frederick A. Canfield	“Perkin mauve” dyed silk, 1860 Photo courtesy of National Museum of American History
When coal was carbonized to make coke (a fuel), or gasified to make coal gas, one of its by-products was coal tar.	William Henry Perkin presented a sample of dyed silk to American industrialist William John Matheson, founder of the National Aniline and Chemical Company. Matheson in turn donated it to the Smithsonian.