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[Grimlocke]

Ok, I want to mod in a way to make cloth white, but I dont want it to be something like 'grind up alunite and put it on cloths'. I want it to be realistic, and if possible historically correct.

This is where I ran into trouble, because after some googling I found out that white dyes simply do not exist. Dyes can only add color, not remove it, and thus white dye is impossible. Cloth can however be made white by bleaching it with some chemical substance, for example household chlorine bleach. This just wouldnt work on silk. A certain site suggested the use of a number of complicated modern chemical substances for bleaching silk, but none of those would fit within the <15th century time cutoff.

So, what I ask is: does anyone know how or whether cloth was made to be white before the 15th century? If it was produced from stone, thats no problem. I allready made vermilion dye produced from cinnabar, and that works well enough.

If not, I guess I could still make some dwarf mushroom that can be milled into 'dwarven bleach', but I would prefer a more realistic approach.
The item description would look rather weird though... 'it is white with dwarven bleach'.

[Martin]

What do you think lye is used for? It was routinely used to bleach paper. Chlorine bleach is just a safer bleaching agent and is less likely to turn your cloth into lint. Sun exposure is probably the most ancient bleaching agent. Takes years, but it works.

Oh, and part of the appeal of silk is that it is naturally white, so you have that answer as well.