Madder
A plant-based red dye from the root of Rubia tinctorum. The dominant red in Zemmour pile work. In natural dye pieces, it ages toward garnet rather than toward rust.
Madder root has been used as a red dye across the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Central Asia for millennia. The Rubia tinctorum plant was cultivated in Morocco, particularly in the south, and traded through established dye-market networks. With alum mordant, madder produces a warm red-orange; with iron mordant, it shifts toward a dark brownish red; with chrome mordant, a burnt orange.
Madder reds behave distinctively with age: they are relatively lightfast but tend to shift slightly toward brown-orange over decades of light exposure, particularly in the lower concentrations used for accent threading. Well-mordanted, concentrated madder can survive centuries in good condition.
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