Asking for beer at 9:30 a.m. raised a few eyebrows next door at the abbey. Assuring Friar Markus that it was needed for an embroidery experiment did little to improve matters. But it was the truth. What had happened? During my MEDATS talk, I asked the audience for help with the madder conundrum. Whilst oil will do the trick, the greasy halo is very unsightly. Afterwards, I was contacted by Deborah Fox, who had done some dyeing experiments herself, and she suggested alcohol. Ale was omnipresent in the Middle Ages, as most water was too polluted to drink. I had always dismissed this option, as I felt the hydrophobic madder would still think beer was too watery. However, I live next door to Ettal Abbey, which has been brewing and making liqueur for hundreds of years. Friar Markus was kind enough to sponsor the experiment with some homemade booze.

For the experiment, I dissolved (or tried to dissolve) an 8th of a teaspoon of madder powder into a teaspoon of pale lager (5.2%), a stout (7.2%) and liqueur (40%). I drew three 3×3 cm rectangles with iron gall ink on my standard white embroidery linen.

As I had expected, the pale lager and the stout were too watery for the madder’s taste. It would not dissolve at all. But it did dissolve beautifully in the liqueur. And the smell was delightful too. Very herbal.

I let the samples dry for a couple of hours. All samples did produce a bit of a halo, but nothing too bad, I think.

When the samples were completely dry, I brushed off the excess madder powder. Oh, dear! We get a very similar result to my experiments with only water. The madder does not go into the linen enough as it does with the oil. And we still have a halo. This probably means that booze isn’t the complete solution either. Maybe several substances were mixed with the madder powder to get the correct result? More experiments are needed!