Cheryl is available for workshops on this and other Natural Dye topics.
Aurora Silk sells Logwood Shavings from the Logwood Project, a sustainable cooperative venture benefiting the indeginous people of the Dominican Republic.
Logwood is the English name of both the dye and the tree from whose heartwood the dye comes. To prepare the best dyestuff from the tree requires that the heartwood first be well cleaned of the surrounding sapwood and bark. Then it must be rasped or planed into shavings, which are "aged" through a mild fermentation process. Then this rich, dark wood is dried and packaged to avoid deterioration by moisture.
If you have tried any of the several preparations of Logwood extract that are on the market today, and been disappointed, please be aware the colours from the true wood shavings are deeper, more varied, and above all, much faster to both light and washing. In all my 33 years of professional experience, I have never had Logwood this good.
To prepare a good dye from the dyestuff, it must be soaked overnight and then boiled vigorously about 30 minutes. The liquid is strained out; this is the dyebath. More water can be added to the wood, as further boiling will extract more dye.
Logwood requires a mordant to develop the colour and fix the dye. With tin mordant, Logwood gives hues in the reddish violet to true purple range. With alum mordant it gives purple to blue purple. With chrome one generally gets a blue toned charcoal. With iron the colour is gray to black, usually with a decided blue cast. Tin give a purple and is the only dye process I know that requires Cream of Tarter to develop the brightest, clearest and fastest hue, at least in the acid waters of the Pacific Northwest.
The molecule that is the Logwood dye can exist in three different forms, depending on how much oxygen has been incorporated into it. The unoxidized form is useless as dye, unless either the mordant or the dye process adds oxygen. This is why it is necessary to use well-fermented wood, and to further soak it overnight, to "air" it and add oxygen. Over-oxidized Logwood is of limited usefulness, giving dull, grayed purples, however it works well for black: black baths keep and get stronger with age, but purple baths generally go gray after a few days of storage.
Logwood is an "indicator" colour, one that changes with the pH of the solution. Thus adding either acid or alkali to the dyebath can modify the hue obtained. Too much acid will actually cause the dye to "disappear". Just enough will give redder tones, while alkalis like chalk or bases like ammonia will turn the tone more blue.
Because the iron-Logwood combination has such a pronouncedly blue tone, iron-Logwood can be used to turn yellows and golds into lovely soft greens. Compounding mordants by adding tin or alum in with the iron gives very fashionable lavender grays.
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