We think of leather, particularly historical leather, as being various shades of brown. When leather is tanned using vegetable sources of tannin it usually does turn brown with different tanning solutions giving different colors. In the US we are also used to seeing brown buckskin leather associated with both the Native Americans and the European frontiersmen. Perhaps we might also think of black leather especially in more of a pirate setting or in associating with the idea of the black jack leather drinking mug. What we don't often think about is colorful dyed leather.
Having just started some leather work I am dissatisfied with the pinkish, yellowish, tan color of the Tandy hides. Given conditioning, time, handling, and exposure to light it would turn darker but I'd like to start out with better looking leather from the start. So I'm embarking on some experimentation on various leather dyes that are at least plausibly in period.
That waffling is important for my first attempt using black walnut. They are a good source of tannin and they contain the chemical juglone that is a dye as well as an herbicide. They are in the scope of the SCA but they don't feel like it was they aren't native to the Old World. Perhaps because of their New World status I have not found a specific source to point to it seems impossible to imagine that black walnuts were not used as an intentional dye prior to 1600 CE. Of course they are prone to dye anything they touch so I'm sure they were an unintentional dye.
The first step was the creation of the dye bath. I started with 13 relatively newly fallen black walnuts in their bright green husks (roughly 700g) in 3 quarts of water. Some were slightly broken open but I didn't do anything additional towards breaking them or separating the husks from the inner shell. This boiled for one hour and then was allowed to cool down overnight. In the morning I strained out the solids. This liquid was used as a room temperature dye bath because I wanted to avoid hardening or shrinking the leather in a boiling solution.
5 pieces of 7-8 oz veggie tanned leather were thrown into the solution. They all sank below the surface. Samples were removed at 1.5 hours (intended to be 1 hour but I lost track of time), 2 hours, 3 hours, and 15 hours with the results shown below.
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| Dyed leather samples |
The four longer pieces are in order of increasing time in the dye. The smaller piece on the right is undyed as a control. The bottom piece, in the liquid for 15 hours, was still slightly damp feeling when the picture was taken even though it had been out of the liquid for at least 6 hours at that point. Due to the lighting the undyed strip looks similar to the 1 hour piece although the difference is more noticeable in person. Clearly it is not a rapid dye. The 3 hour and 15 hour samples both have pleasing uniform colors.
The 1 hour sample showed the most curling and all samples were stiffer than the undyed sample with stiffness increasing as the sample spent more time in the dye. My first guess is that the 1 hour sample never fully saturated with liquid which might explain the curling on the edges as it dried. Handling the samples and light rubbing with a cloth didn't 't seem to transfer any color or reduce the color of the samples.
After 24 hours of drying time the leather that soaked for 15 hours in the dye solution is now dry. It show some curling at the edges but also a deep and uniform khaki brown color. While the 3 hour sample is nice the color isn't dark enough to warrant dealing with making the dye. Since added time is easy it makes sense to go for a 12-15 hour soak.
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