Dyeing fixatives

Usage examples of mordants.

Most mordants are metal salts, although there are a few, like tannic acid and tartartic acid, that are not.

During the early modern period, the most common mordants were alum, copperas (iron) and blue vitriol (copper).

The combination of mordants and when they were applied both affected the final color.

Many dye recipes from the Innsbruck manuscript, which contain the earliest known dye recipes in the German language, call for two or three different mordants to be applied.

Other chemicals, while weak mordants by themselves, can be used to alter the effect of traditional mordants.