Madder
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Madder. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a dye plant of the bed-straw family. It has a weak, four-angled stem with whorls of prickly leaves, and small, greenish flowers succeeded by black fruit. Madder is a native of the warmer parts of Europe and Asia, where it is still cultivated. Commercial madder comes from Holland, France, Italy, and Turkey. The plants are started from cuttings set in rows like beans, and are allowed to grow two seasons. The roots are lifted in the autumn with a fork. They are washed, dried carefully, and freed from the outer skin by beating. They are ground into a powder or are sent to market in bales. Madder dye gives the famous Turkey red admired in oriental countries. It is well known also to the Greeks. The historical red of the French and British military uniforms is a madder dye. By the skillful use of a mordant, madder colors of great variety are produced, ranging from pink, through red and yellow, to purple and brown. Madder is the most important vegetable dyestuff known in the arts. Of late aniline red obtained by the distillation of coal tar has supplanted natural madder in part. See also INDIGO; DYEING; ANILINE.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in botany, the genus Rubia, and specially R. tinctorum. It is a trail ing or climbing annual, supporting itself by its leaves and prickles. It is supplied chiefly from Holland, France, Italy, and Turkey. Indian madder, called also madder of Bengal, is R. cordifolia; madder of Chile, R. augustissima or Relboum. In chemistry, the root of R. tinctorum is extensively used in dyeing for the production of a variety of colors, namely, red, pink, purple, black, and chocolate. The colors produced from madder are very stable, the well-known Turkey-red being one of them; and the tints and shades obtainable, according to the mordant used, are very numerous. Alizarin, or madder red, discovered by Robiquet, may be extracted with solvents, or obtained by sublimation in the form of beautiful reddish needles (see ALIZARIN). In pharmacy, madder is a tonic, a diuretic, and an emmenagogue. Brown madder, a rich red-brown pigment, prepared from the roots of R. tinctorum.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's called madder "the most important vegetable dyestuff known in the arts" in 1910, the industry it described was already in ruins: Graebe and Liebermann synthesised alizarin from anthracene in 1868, and Perkin patented a rival process within a day of them, so coal-tar alizarin had undercut the root by the 1870s and French and Dutch madder acreage all but vanished before 1900. Collier's 1921 note that alizarin "may be extracted with solvents" was by then a historical curiosity "u2014 essentially all of it was made in factories, chiefly German ones. The madder red of French army trousers went too: the pantalon rouge was abandoned for horizon blue during 1914-15 because it made men visible targets. Rubia tinctorum survives today as a craft dye for hand-woven textiles and carpet restoration, and as the name of the artists' colour alizarin crimson, itself now often a synthetic substitute.
Written for this edition, 2026.