On the substitution of Madder for synthetic Alizarin
By 1869, Graebe and Liebermann's synthesis of alizarin from anthracene had begun to displace the long-standing trade in Rubia tinctorum root. The first commercial samples — reaching Lyon in the autumn of 1871 — gave dyers a fastness on cotton that the natural extract could only achieve with onerous mordanting.
Industrial uptake was uneven: by 1880 the printers of Mulhouse had switched almost entirely; the carpet-makers of Smyrna held to madder for a further three decades, by which point the cultivated crop in the Avignon basin had collapsed.