This is the most comprehensive manual written on natural dyes since the early 1800s. Jim Liles has rescued ancient skills from near-extinction and shared them in a book that will inspire, challenge, and guide the modern dyer.--Rita Buchanan, author of A Weaver's Garden, and editor of the new Brooklyn Botanic Gardens Handbook on Natural Dyesbr . . . a must for every dyer. The recipes are explicit and detailed as to success and failure.--Mary Frances Davidson pFor several thousand years, all dyes were of animal, vegetable, or mineral origin, and many ancient civilizations possessed excellent dye technologies. The first synthetic dye was produced in 1856, and the use of traditional dyes declined rapidly thereafter. By 1915 few non-synthetics were used by industry or craftspeople. The craft revivals of the 1920s explored traditional methods of natural dyeing to some extent, particularly with wool, although the great eighteenth- and nineteenth-century dye manuals, which recorded the older p