From time immemorial, we who delight in such our day to day surroundings. The challenge of finding materials in the world around us that are capable of producing lasting colours has preoccupied humankind from prehistory to the present day. Primitive people in whatever part of the world they lived used colours to protect themselves from spells of evil spirits. Long before they began to wear clothes
, they used colours to adorn they bodies. Colours also express a symbolic language and have different part of the world. The rock, plants and animals with which we share the earth could supply us with many colouring agents, but in fact few are durable. The chlorophyll that gives vegetation its rich green yield, when extracted from the plants, is an unstable tinting agent that fades and disappears in a mater of hours. None of vibrant colours of the peacock`s striking plumage can be transferred to any other material. To try to do so would be like trying to extract the colours from the rainbow. Fortunately, nature abounds with a generous supply of other organic and inorganic substances whose colours can be extracted and transferred to a variety of supports. Thus we must distinguish coloured material from colorant. Colorants are extracts from a natural source and apllied to become the integral part of support material like cotton, silk, leather, plastic etc. Colorants are classified as either pigment or dyes. Pigments are practically insoluble in the medium in which they are incorporated. Dyes dissolve during application, losing they crystal or particulate structure in the process. The difference between pigments and dyes in therefore due to physical characteristics rather than chemical composition. The colorants can be natural or man - made. The natural colorants can be of animal or plant origin or minerals. The art of using dyes seems to have developed independently and been practiced independently by different cultures in almost every region of the earth.
