In the south of France around 1744, Antoine Janot was a master dyer in Saint-Chinian, a centre of wool broadcloth production. His dye works produced an extraordinary range of colours—reds, purples, greens, blacks and countless subtle variations—using the natural dyes and techniques of his time.
Nearly three centuries later, Dominique Cardon and Iris Brémaud have brought this remarkable body of knowledge into the present. Delivered in both English and French, blending historic natural dye recipes and modern scientific analysis.
Drawing on Janot’s surviving manuscripts, archival documents and actual dyed cloth samples, they have assembled and studied 85 examples of his dyeing practice. Iris Brémaud’s colourimetric research allows these historical colours to be examined in a new way, revealing the subtle differences in hue, lightness and saturation that can exist between colours sharing the same name.
This Workbook is part of a series of publications that aim at mapping the development of the chromatic spaces corresponding to names of colours or nuances — mapping how a colour described as, for example, a particular green, red or purple can vary across time, place, materials and dyers. And there are wonderful discoveries along the way.
Crow’s wing, pomegranate flower, daffodil, emerald … the rainbow of hundreds of colours dyed by Antoine Janot and his workers, year after year, on the fine wool broadcloths produced in the south of France for export to the Levant. Who was Antoine Janot? A master-dyer at work during the Age of Enlightenment, a “dodgy adventurer, as reckless, haughty and dangerous as he is masterful a dyer”.
This Workbook traces Janot’s life-long quest to create beautiful and fast colours. Tapping unexpected archive sources and combining experimental archaeology and colorimetry, it systematically explores his dyeing processes for colours obtained exclusively using natural colorants.
The authors:
Dr Dominique Cardon is a historian and archaeologist studying the history of textiles and natural dyeing using a multidisciplinary approach. She is Emerita Director of Research at the French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS). She was awarded the CNRS Silver Medal in 2011 and the Turner Medal of the Colour Group (GB) in 2025.
Dr Iris Brémaud is Director of Research at the CNRS (LMGC unit in Montpellier). She specializes in wood science and explores the relationships between craft knowledge and the physical and aesthetic properties of plant matter, using colorimetry in the historical research on colours covered in this Workbook.
Bilingual edition – French & English
Hardcover edition with 304 pages – over 250 illustrations
Published September 21, 2025
ISBN 978-2-494830-165
