Re: Dark maroon hue and Mad Props to Catherine W.J.
Posted by Roy Jones on March 20, 1998 at 04:41:22:
In Reply to: Dark maroon hue and Mad Props to Catherine W.J. posted by Thanya on March 20, 1998 at 02:40:00:
: I used to work for a henna salon who used a secret recipe. As far
: as I could tell, it contained eucylptus and clove oil. The results
: were fantastic!! The color was a deep maroon color on most people
: which was achieved after leaving the paste on for 6 hours, and
lasted
: an average of two weeks. The paste was a dark brown instead of dark
: green. I assume that something reddish is being added to the paste.
Catherine's away on a mission at the moment, so I'll respond in her
place...
We are knitters and sometime weavers and learned a lot of what we
bring to working with henna from years of experience working with dyes
for silk and wool and occasionally creating our own dyestuffs from
whatever interesting vegetable matter was at hand.
Henna is a dye, as opposed to a pigment. That's an important
distinction, because dyes and pigments operate very differently. The
main active ingredient in henna is a form of tannic acid. The tannin
reacts with the skin and contributes to the reddish-brown color you
get when you apply henna.
A pigment, body paint for example, is an opaque material that lies on
the surface but reacts with it very little or not at all. A dye
becomes part of the substance it's applied to because it reacts
chemically with some component of the material it's appled to.
One of the things you can do to promote the dyeing action is add a
material called a "mordant" to the dye or prepare the material to
be dyed by treating it with a mordant before dyeing. The word comes
from a Latin word meaning "to bite." The mordant helps make the
material to be dyed more receptive to the dye chemicals, usually by
softening or weakening some part of its structure. That's the
function of the lemon or lime juice that's a staple in most henna
recipes I've seen. I don't know the specific properties of eucalyptus
or clove oil, but it's possible one or both could be acting as a
mordant and make the henna react more strongly with the skin.
I've just remembered something that might be an interesting
experiment. Years ago, a friend of mine was staining some wood using
water based dyes he had concocted, and he sanded the wood with salt
just before applying the dyes. He believed this would make the wood
more readily absorb the dye-laden water because salt is deliquescent,
that is, it tends to draw moisture. I have no idea if it made any
difference in the staining of the wood, but his theory sounded
interesting.
On the assumption that my friend was correct in his thinking, what
would happen if henna were applied to a hand that had been carefully
scrubbed with table salt in advance?
Roy