A new process is presented to non-invasively identify organic dyes in historic textiles and other works of art. A small gel bead loaded with a SERS substrate is used to gently extract microscopic amounts of dyes from works of art, without the need to remove a sample and separately extract the dye by acid hydrolysis of the fiber-mordant-dye system. The gel bead subsequently is coated with a silver, gold or copper colloid or with silver, gold or copper nanoislands, and is examined in accordance with a surface enhanced Raman scattering technique to identify the dye.