It became an incredibly valuable resource in Europe through the Middle Ages, becoming only slightly less rare as trade routes opened up throughout the Renaissance. India was the primary source of indigo in the Greco-Roman era, though other Asian countries like China and Japan had also utilized indigo for centuries. The notoriety of indigo goes back thousands of years, particularly in India, the oldest center of indigo dyeing. Today very few people are involved in the use of Indigofera balls: Among them are Dogon people in Mali and artists such as American Rowland Ricketts who prepares a compost from Persicaria tinctoria which grows in a temperate climate, reviving an old Japanese method of composting the plant material and using it for dye. In Europe before the 19th C., the preparation of indigo balls was done by growers using the indigenous woad plant (Isatis tinctoria.) During the 19th century, the old fashioned use of balls was gradually abandoned and replaced by the blue extract, called indigo. In the past, balls of dried Indigofera leaves were available in some West African countries such as Mali and Senegal to be used by local dyers.
The leaves are transformed by farmers into a blue extract that is sold to dyers who prepare dye vats with the addition of an alkali (such as lye or lime) and a reducing agent (either chemical like thiourea dioxide or natural such as fructose in powdered form or as the syrup from certain fruits.) What is indigo? The dye is extracted from the leaves of plants in the genus Indigofera, which grow in tropical climates.
Indigo is probably the most famous of all natural dyes, and is certainly the most widely used today.
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