“Clothes make the man,” says a famous proverb by Gottfried Keller, but few know chemistry’s role here. Adolf Jenny-Trümpy’s colorful fabric sample books from the 18th and 20th centuries provide a vivid demonstration. Available for the first time as an online catalog, the volumes provide a virtual insight into the fine art of textile dyeing and reveal sophisticated chemical compounds, valuable cow dung, useful insects, and fabric prints that transformed Switzerland into a textile powerhouse.
Fall of the old
In July 1907, three quick shots echoed through the Swiss town of Ennenda and, according to the Neue Glarner Zeitung, reduced the large factory chimney of the traditional “Trümpyger” factory to rubble. Adolf Jenny-Trümpy, a chemist and third-generation “Trümpyger”, may have witnessed the scene. In any case, the shattered tower symbolizes a turning point in the history of the “Trümpyger” company and, simultaneously, the decline of Glarus as one of the international leaders of the textile printing industry.
This “fall of the old ”1[1] , however, could have been the impetus for an unorthodox rescue operation since the closure of the traditional textile printing factories was likely to provoke an enormous loss of knowledge.
Between 1907 and 1934, Adolf Jenny-Trümpy, probably with helpers, immortalized the most important printing patterns from the Glarus region and the “Trümpyger”-company officially known as Bartholome Jenny & Cie (later Daniel, Jenny & Co) in 22 volumes, each copied nine times. He supplemented the samples, printed on various fabrics and glued to cardboard sheets, with “recipes” on the chemistry and synthesis of the dyes used, as well as with information on dyeing conditions and the history of color chemistry.
The chemist bequeathed 17 volumes of one of these series to the “Chemical Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Polytechnic” (now Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH Zurich), where researchers such as Prof. Karl Heumann were recognized for their development of synthetic dyes at the end of the 19th century.
Examples from Jenny-Trümpy’s print samples from various volumes, photos: Julia Ecker, ETH Zurich:
Adolf Jenny-Trümpy’s aim was probably to preserve knowledge for future generations, perhaps also to raise awareness of the art of textile printing. Most people leafing through his books today will indeed feel like clueless laymen – would you know what dyes were used in your sweater? Whythe colors remain fixed, or how the artistic pattern may have been applied to the fabric?
Chemical know-how from cochineal to cow dung
In Jenny-Trümpy’s work, one encounters colors such as steam pink, benzopurpurine, malachite green, azo black, or aniline violet. You learn that there is lightfastness and soapfastness and that the fancy pattern on your sweater could represent “palmettes”: artistic palm fronds that are still trendy today and used to be incredibly complex to print. The patterns first had to be laboriously processed from a paper design into a stamp (model). This was dipped in specially produced dyes and printed onto fabric. Elaborate processes and dyeing recipes were used for this task.
Jenny-Trümpy’s books tell us that natural dyes from plants and animals were used for a long time – including dwarf buckthorn berries (yellow tones), indigo plants (blue tones), and insects like the cochineal lice (red tones) – and we learn about the new possibilities offered by the later artificially produced aniline dyes (tar dyes). The fact that dyeing can also be an unhealthy business only becomes clear when Jenny-Trümpy touches on the topic of arsenic-containing compounds and the toxicity or explosiveness of the picric acid used or when he tells us that the expensive cochineal carmine was used as a non-toxic red dye for ham.
Furthermore, readers will be amazed at the variety of methods used. Some of them may even change our opinion about animal excrement – an amazingly valuable ingredient: before dying, textiles were often “cow-dunged”, so soaked in a lukewarm broth of cow dung, water, and other ingredients to make them easier to dye.
Speaking of dung: Purple acid, for instance, was also called guano red because the uric acid required for its production was often obtained from South American bird dung.
Such ingenious methods and chemical compounds in combination with knowledge of the textile markets and the exploitation of their niches, turned Glarus’ farming villages into industrial locations. The Glarus textile print factories exported their products worldwide – from Europe, Asia, and Africa to the Americas – and could survive because they focused on products manufactured from techniques where machines were inferior to manual craftsmanship. In the end, however, they were still overtaken by technological developments and mass production.
Adolf Jenny-Trümpy’s books – probably a visual supplement to his main work “Trade and Industry of the Canton of Glarus” – represent an attempt to save at least the theory of historical craftsmanship for the modern age.
Fabric sample books as anonline catalog
To preserve the fragile books, some of which are over a hundred years old, and ensure that they can continue to serve their purpose in the future, the D-CHAB public relations team (Julia Ecker, Oliver Renn) has now had 17 volumes completely digitized and transcribed as part of a project funded by the ETH Zurich Collections and Archives, and transferred to a freely accessible online catalog: https://truempy-druckmuster.ethz.ch/en
The catalog designed and developed by Maria Pechlaner exclusively for this purpose makes it possible to rediscover Adolf Jenny-Trümpy’s collection: whether by searching using various filters, using the zoom function, or browsing the transcribed manuscript.
Thelattermakesiteasiertounderstandtheinformationandprovidesagoodbasisfor
futurescientificprojectsortheplannedanalysisofthecontent–fromanartistic,a
textileand,aboveall,achemicalperspective.Theinformationandsamplescouldserveasareference,forexample,forcomparisonwithtoday’sprocesses.
But even if you don’t have any professional motives, you are invited to marvel at this treasure trove. We hope you will be inspired. Enjoy exploring!
Adolf Jenny-Trümpy studied at the Polytechnic in Zurich and was trained as a cloth printer in Mühlhausen. In 1877, he joined the family business Bartholome Jenny & Co and became a partner two years later. He was responsible for the technical coloristic part. After the printing factory closed in 1907, he remained with the company until 1922 (the company had been reduced to weaving and spinning) and wrote the fabric pattern books as well as his main work “Handel und Industrie des Kantons Glarus”, for which he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich.
Further information:
Adolf Jenny-Trümpy’s fabric pattern books (catalog): https://truempy-druckmuster.ethz.ch/
Biography Adolf Jenny-Trümpy (only available in German): https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/030094/2012-04-05/
Anna Wanners Textilhistorie: Adolf Jenny-Trümpy (only available in German) http://www.annatextiles.ch/druck_ennenda/text/musterband.htm
Gril-Mariotte A. (2024): The Book of printed Fabrics. From the 16th century until today. Musée de l`Impression sur Etoffes de mulhouse. Taschen Verlag.
Von Arx R., Davatz J., Rohr A. (2005): Industriekultur im Kanton Glarus. Streifzüge durch 250 Jahre Geschichte und Architektur. Südostschweiz Buchverlag
[1] NGZ v. 29.7.1907, cited in: Von Arx R., Davatz J., Rohr A. (2005): Industriekultur im Kanton Glarus. Streifzüge durch 250 Jahre Geschichte und Architektur. Südostschweiz Buchverlag. S. 168.
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