[Herbalist] RE: Walnut Hulls

[Wendy Freeman/Otte]

I meant to look the details up at home - but walnut hulls of whatever species were local (and I fairly certain "English" was not the only one in Europe) were used for brown and black dyes from pre-history.  I question whether "black" walnut hulls produce any darker dye than any other walnut hull - the black refers to the color of the tree's bark, not the color of the hull.

So, the practice of gathering hulls from a local walnut tree, fermenting them, and dyeing your wool is perfectly appropriate for an A&S competition - more so than importing pre-processed walnut hull dye.  Just do a little research and document that you are using a different species.  If you want to turn it into a research paper, compare the chemical similarities and differences of a European Walnut hull and the local Black Walnut hull.

Thought for the purists: How does this differ from the use of cochineal or local orchil-producing lichen?  If an artisan documents the variation and notes that the process, basic dye-producing chemical, and (usually) result is identical to the hard-to-obtain European original, they have gained a valuable understanding of the process and the history.  It would be unjust to punish someone for wisely using local resources to imitate their European counterparts.

H.L. Wyllow MacMuireadhaigh
Barony of Loch Soillier, Ansteorra

>Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 16:08:39 -0500
>To: herbalist at ansteorra.org
>From: "Amy L. Hornburg Heilveil" <aheilvei at uiuc.edu>
>Subject: [Herbalist] walnuts
>Reply-To: herbalist at ansteorra.org
>
>--
>[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
>At 11:09 PM 10/15/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>>        Oh, and in case anyone is unclear on the topic, *black* walnuts are an
>>American tree, so I doubt they would have been used to any significant degree
>>in Europe within our period. Soooooooo, just don't plan to use them on an A&S
>>project!
>
>Nope, you need English walnuts for A&S stuff.
>
>

--
--Wendy F. Otte

"To err is human



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