How did synthetic dyes replace natural dyes?
Inspired by a series of international expositions between 1851 and 1876, Europe’s new industrial middle class lined its sitting-rooms with hand-knotted rugs from Anatolia, Azerbaijan, Iran, North Africa, Central Asia and India. The increased demand outstripped supply, and rug prices increased. But higher prices could neither speed up the laborious hand-work needed to collect raw materials for natural dyes, nor increase the supply of those dye plants that were not cultivated crops. An 18-year-old English chemistry student, William Perkins, working over his Easter holiday from the Royal College of Chemistry in 1856, was completing an assignment from his German professor, Wilhelm von Hoffmann, to attempt to synthesize quinine. Accidentally, he produced a purple substance that, he noted, dyed silk as well as cotton with a color that was both bright and lightfast. Perkins instantly abandoned quinine and applied for a patent for his synthetic dye, which he called mauveine after the purple fl
