85 Colours from an 18th-Century Master Dyer — A New Book by Dominique Cardon & Iris Brémaud
ANTOINE JANOT’S 85 COLOURS
BY DOMINIQUE CARDON & IRIS BRÉMAUD
We’re delighted to have ‘Antoine Janot’s 85 Colours’ by Dominique Cardon & Iris Brémaud in our Maiwa Bookshop!
In the south of France around 1744, Antoine Janot was a master dyer in Saint-Chinian, a centre of wool broadcloth production. His dye works produced an extraordinary range of colours—reds, purples, greens, blacks and countless subtle variations—using the natural dyes and techniques of his time.
Nearly three centuries later, Dominique Cardon and Iris Brémaud have brought this remarkable body of knowledge into the present. Delivered in both English and French, blending historic natural dye recipes and modern scientific analysis.
Drawing on Janot’s surviving manuscripts, archival documents and actual dyed cloth samples, they have assembled and studied 85 examples of his dyeing practice. Iris Brémaud’s colourimetric research allows these historical colours to be examined in a new way, revealing the subtle differences in hue, lightness and saturation that can exist between colours sharing the same name.
This Workbook is part of a series of publications that aim at mapping the development of the chromatic spaces corresponding to names of colours or nuances — mapping how a colour described as, for example, a particular green, red or purple can vary across time, place, materials and dyers. And there are wonderful discoveries along the way.
The result is much more than a collection of historical recipes. It is a way of looking closely at colour itself—and at the knowledge, craft and economic history held within a piece of dyed cloth.
Colours from the Past series also includes:
PAUL GOUT’S 157 COLOURS
A journey into the colours of the past—and the knowledge that still lives within them.
Also by Dominique Cardon:
NATURAL DYES:
SOURCES, TRADITION, TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE
The authoritative and encyclopedic reference work for natural dyes.
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