This week I was reading Textiles at Temple Newsam by Helen Bower. I noticed two examples on page 59 of 'first half of the 19th century' double violets with this notation...'examples of Hoyle's purple, the best fast purple dye of this period'. I was not familiar with this particular purple dye...and so I started searching my reference books and journals. I did eventually find several mentions of Thomas Hoyle and Sons of Lancashire.
Purple cotton prints of that era were often successfully printed by a weak iron mordant and madder dye bath. Logwood also produced a lilac or purple print but these were usually fugitive. Sometimes a combination of madder and logwood were used. So was Hoyle using a different dye?
According to Susan Greene in an article in Dress, Hoyle was using madder dye for his famous Purples. He was just doing a much better job than other printers of the time....better quality greige goods, careful handing of the dye stuffs and extra steps in the process...sulfuric acid pre-treatment of the ground cloth and a final lime water rinse. By specializing in one dye, one process and one print style ( busy patterned prints) and doing them all very well, Hoyle made a name for himself.