Ancient indian technique extract color (Neelam) from indigo plants

Today we all are using different varieties of clothes.People are looking for well looking colors of clothes.Normally in ancient days colors are extracted from plants,mostly indigo.Did any one know  where the extraction of color started???

The term indigo comes from roman term indicumm, which means a product of india. locally called neeli. A thousand of years ago local farmers in india extracted the die and exported to Africa, japan,etc..

Extraction process:  Crush the leaves of indigo(neeli) plants and allowed to stays 2-3 days in fermentation tank, and then heated up to maintain acidity and alkalinity of the color.Beating of the leaves can change the color from light blue to blue,thick blue to blue or black. Then allowed to filtering followed by drying to make fine shaped into cakes.These were exported to all over the world including europe.

 
                                                            1. Crushing leaves

2. Fermentation

3.Beating of leaves

4.Filtering

5.Drying

6.Blue cakes

Irony  :  In the year 1905 johann van bayer awarded to replicate the process "neeli rasayanam" . For that he awarded by nobel prize.But nobody gave any appreciation or awards to local farmers who are doing the same thing about 100's of years before..

                                                             


                                                                                                                                   JAI HIND