There is an unusual dyeing technique not much used by handweavers now, it seems, which exploits the different affinities of some fibres to particular dyes. Vegetable fibres such as cotton and linen take brightly to reactive dyes used cold but are almost unaffected by the acid dyes used with heat for wool, silk and other animal fibres. Natural dyes like madder will only colour vegetable fibres after special mordanting, whereas indigo can be used on wool and silk as well as cotton. Some ethnic textiles from different parts of the world seem to make use of these different properties of fibres and dyes in an intriguing way. From the south of Tunisia, in North Africa, in the Gabes region comes a woman's shawl in wool - handspun in the past, no doubt. The bakhnuq has this surprising particularity that it is woven in undyed wool with extremely fine brocaded motifs in cotton at the sides and in the centre of the cloth. After weaving, the shawl is dyed and somehow the brocaded motifs remain white.
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