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2019 04 Cardon Dominique

Dear All,

my book  on a 18th century Languedocian dyer has just come out. It includes the edition of three of his memoirs on dyeing and many samples of dyed wool broadcloth.

The 1st Memoir edited in this new book is the earliest document presenting all the fast colours that were produced on broadcloth for the Levant one generation earlier, around the 1740s. It is earlier than Hellot’s and much more technical. The author was very conscious of the value of his knowledge and he wrote these memoirs as a contribution to the spirit of Enlightenment and a way to fight against the arrogance and credulity of the elites of Ancien Régime France.

In the last part of the book I discuss his colours from a technological and colorimetric point of view and about the reds, I present some comparisons with the reds produced in the same period by the Crutchleys, a family of dyers from Southwark whose archive Dr Anita Quye from the University of Glasgow, Dr Jenny Balfour-Paul from the University of Exeter and myself have been studying recently.

Cardon, D., Des Couleurs pour les Lumières – Antoine Janot, teinturier occitan (1700-1778). Paris: CNRS Editions, 2019.

http://www.cnrseditions.fr/art/7841-des-couleurs-pour-les-lumieres.html

The man was actually the mentor of the dyer I previously presented in The Dyer’s Handbook – Memoirs of an 18th century Master Colourist. Oxford and Philadelphia: Oxbow Books, 2016.

Kind regards,
Dominique

Dr Ms Dominique Cardon
Directrice de Recherche émérite CNRS / Emerita Senior Researcher CNRS
CIHAM/UMR 5648, Lyon