Walnut Dye: Crushed Husk with Ferrous Oxide

 For this experiment I added Ferrous Oxide, a.k.a rusty iron to a small pot of crushed husk dye to see how that changed the colour. It was a very small pot of dye so I was only able to do the cold and hot dip tests.

The dye batch started just like the regular crushed husk dye batch. Chopping and soaking the green husks in warm water. I had some rusted steel that I had found while on one of my walks. I broke the big piece into small pieces and crushed them as fine as possible in my mortar. By the end there were a mix of small pieces and course rust dust. I mixed this into the pot and boiled everything for 6-8 hours.

The liquid looked very black instead of brown and the white linen took on a very different shade of brown. While wet the fabric looked like a very dark grey brown but as it dried it took on a slight red overtone. As with the other tests I rinsed and washed the fabric swatches.

Unlike the other tests, this dye seemed to bleed more during the rinse and wash tests. The colours in the picture are more green than they really are but the picture does show the the difference between the dyed and dried only and the rinsed and washed samples. Even after the water ran clear small amounts of dye can be seen on the white cardstock.


Because I was not able to boil the fabric in the dye as with the other dyes I do not know if the colour would have been darker and more wash resistant than the dip tests were. Walnut season is now over and the squirrels have successfully cleaned up all the nuts, which means I will not be able to repeat this test until next season.

Walnut Dye: Crushed Husk on Linen

For this Walnut dye experiment I went with the crushed, cut up, husks to make the dye. The progression of pictures shows all the major steps but I will go over them.

1) Collect and cut the husks off of the nuts. The squirrels love this part because the nuts are ready for them to munch on after you have filled your pot.

2) Cover the husk pieces with water and let it soak overnight. The water actually turns brown very quickly, but all the pages I found says you get a better dye if you allow the husks to oxidize overnight.

3) Boil the pot of husks until they are very soft and the water is very dark.

4) Strain out all the big pieces. Note to self, three gallons of cut up husks makes a whole lot of liquid. You can see in the photo that the husks turned into a grainy mush at the bottom of the pan. The one 1800's book I referenced called this "soil" and I know why. It looks like black earth in the bottom of the pan. I threw this gunk away but I am wondering now if I should have used it as a mulch around my blueberry bushes.

5) Continue to cook the strained mixture. This is the point where I did my hot dip, 20 minute boil, and 1 hour boil dye tests. After it cooled overnight is when I did my cold dip test.

6) Since the Spouse wants to try making ink with walnut juice we strained the liquid again the next day, using a very fine muslin bag as the strainer, and put the resulting liquid in jars. The Spouse mixed this two parts to one alcohol to preserve the liquid.

7) And finally my dye swatches. The photo looks more green than it actually is. I took the photo inside under LED lights so the colour is not correct. The swatches are actually four shades of a rich brown. Starting at the top left we have Cold Dip, Hot Dip, 20 Minute Boil, and 1 Hour Boil.

Each column consists of four pieces: Dried, Cold Rinsed, Cold Wash with detergent, and Hot Wash with Detergent/ Cold Rinse. There was a very small amount of water discoloration at the beginning of each wetting process, but the rinse waters cleared quickly. I like the brown dyes the cut up husks makes and can see making clothes dyed in this for use in the SCA.

I am also going to make dye using crushed husked and some rusted metal. Not only do I want to see how that changes the colours but I also want to see if it makes the dye more or less permanent. I am going to hang all the swatches in a sunny South facing window to test the lightfastness of the walnut dyes.

Walnut Dye: Whole Husk on Linen

I am insatiably curious about things, especially arts and crafty type things. The Spouse came in and told me that the Walnut tree in the neighbour's yard was dropping lots of nuts this year. When we first moved here I told him I wanted to try making dye from the walnut husks, but the last few years there were no, or few, nuts. So I jumped at the chance to try making dye for linen using the nuts.

I have not found a single source that suggests walnut husks were used in period for dye. I do know that Walnuts originated in Turkey and have spread from there. I also know that early people's were not shy about trying everything in nature to make dye and occasionally ink. Walnuts, all species, have a great deal of tannin in the green husk that surrounds the nut. It is also a source of natural iodine.If you crush the husks your hands will get stained a light orange. The longer your expose your fingers the darker the stain gets so it is reasonable to think that the Romans, Byzantine, Early Medieval, and Medieval people took note of this effect and used it to its fullest effect.

Locally, we have the North American native Black Walnut. Like its Middle Eastern cousins, the fleshy outer husk starts out a bright green but quickly begins to turn black if it is bruised in any way. It is also a favourite food of the North American squirrels who are more than happy to find  stash assembled by some foolish human. If they think about it, they probably just assume that they have found the poorly hidden stash of another squirrel and quickly liberate the nuts for themselves.

The process starts by collecting enough nuts to create your dye. Since we had a plethora of nuts this year I decided I was going to make two types of dye. One made with the crushed husks and one made from the whole nuts. I sorted through the collection and chose 14 nuts that were nut bruised, crushed, or otherwise damaged. I placed the nuts in a small enameled pan and covered them with hot tap water. They were placed on the stove and simmered for 4 hours, until the nuts started turning a dark greenish brown.

We strained the solids out of the liquid using a nylon straining bag I use when making jelly. I knew it was going to be stained but I didn't care. The colour of the bag will not affect its ability to strain juice from fruit later. I made sure to squeeze as much of the liquid as possible form the solids without crushing the whole nuts, so that the colour of the dye was not changed by the internal flash of the walnuts.

At this point the dye was ready for use. I decided to test four strips of white linen. A quick hot dip, a 20 minute boil, a 1 hour boil, and once the liquid was cooled down completely, a cold dip. The dyed strips were then allowed to dry completely overnight before I did the wash tests. The picture below shows the results of the dyeing and wash testing of the pieces of linen. The piece of linen in the centre is the original colour of the linen.

The top left column is the cold dipped linen. The top right column is the hot dip. The bottom left is the 20 minute boil The final column is the 1 hour boil.

The picture should be large enough for you to read the notes but just in case it is not:
1) The top piece in each column is the linen dyed and dried only.
2) The second piece was rinsed in cold water only. The rinse water did change colour a little.
3) The third piece was washed and rinsed in cold water with detergent. Again there was a slight discoloration of the wash water but not the rinse water.
4) The final piece was washed in hot water with detergent and rinsed in cold water. There was the same level of discolouration to the wash water but again none to the rinse water.

My conclusions are that:
1) Whole walnut husk dye is wash permanent.
2) Whole husk dye gives you a lovely olive green which gets darker the longer the boil it.
3)Light to dark tan can be achieved using the cold or hot dip. I presume the colour will be darker the longer the linen is left in the dye.

I want to collect more of the unbruised nuts and dye enough linen to make a pair of pants, a tunic, and some trim. I don't think that will be this year so I hope that the nut crop is large again next year.