Toulouse woad (pastel) industry
Industria del pastel (glasto) de Tolosa
- Date
- c. 1500 · confidence medium
- Place
- Toulouse, Occitania, France
- Credited to
- Merchants and dyers of the Languedoc
- Field
- Tools
What it is
Large-scale production of balls of fermented Isatis tinctoria leaves sold across Europe to dye cloth blue. It enriched Toulouse and gave rise to the expression 'Land of Cockaigne' from the woad balls (cocagnes).
Woad has dyed cloth in Europe since the Neolithic; the milestone is the industrialisation of its cultivation and fermentation in Occitania (c. 1450-1560). It collapsed with imported indigo in the 17th century.
What it led to
- Toulouse's Renaissance mercantile wealth (grand townhouses)
- low-cost European blue until the arrival of American and Indian indigo
- regulation and ban of indigo to protect woad