Dyeing in Haslemere

The Haslemere Educational Museum have some interesting remnants of the dyeing industry performed by the Haslemere Peasant Arts movement.

The primary Peasant Arts work that springs to mind exhibiting vegetable dyes is The Spies.

The Spies, Godfrey Blount
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The museum have a copy of Handbook on Dyeing, Etc. for woollen homespun workers (R. P. Milroy, Congested Districts Board for Ireland) which has two stamps on the inside cover "The Peasant Arts Guild, The Homespun and Rug Weaving Industry", plus "The Spinning and Weaving School Kings Road  Haslemere" is written between these two stamps.  This suggests that Milroy's book was used as a handbook for reference at the Spinning and Weaving School on Kings Road.  I am not clear which building that would have been, but most probably it was either the Weaving House or the Dye House on Kings Road.

The Peasants Arts Guild
reproduced courtesy of Haslemere Educational Museum

R.P's Milroy's Handbook on Dyeing
reproduced courtesy of Haslemere Educational Museum

The splattered pages of the book are particularly evocative of the time, conjuring up a scene where vats of vegetable dye bubble away as industrious local workers transport their homespun wool from the Dye House to the Weaving House.   I wonder how they consulted the book?  And which dyes were the most popular?

from R. P. Milroy's Handbook on Dyeingreproduced courtesy of Haslemere Educational Museum

Some recipes that caught my eye were to dye:

• dark green
• dark olive green
• madder red
• golden brown
• claret
• light crotal shade
• brownish tint from stem and leaves of bracken fern

from R. P. Milroy's Handbook on Dyeingreproduced courtesy of Haslemere Educational Museum

from R. P. Milroy's Handbook on Dyeingreproduced courtesy of Haslemere Educational Museum