Returning to Canada after having committed to a natural dye workshop in Assam, we had to unpack our samples of silks and see if they could be dyed successfully.

When we were in Assam we tried our best to gather local knowledge about silk dyeing. Popular opinion is that the local silks cannot be dyed.

Our concerns with testing are with the fineness of the muga - the reeled silk is exceptionally thin. And we do not want the muga to loose it's sheen when it completes the dye process. Muga is also spun and pot-reeled (mainly from the imperfect cocoons and the ones from which the adult moths have emerged). Some of the yarns have a "slub" and they might take the dye unevenly. The Eri, which is spun and behaves more like cotton, has a tendency to pill. We are worried that it will felt or become hopelessly tangled when it enters the dyebath.

Much to our satisfaction, the tests are successful. We experiment with a range of mordanting strengths using two forms of Alum: Potassium aluminum sulphate and alum acetate. Those of you who wandered into the Maiwa Supply store in December of 2008 would have been fortunate enough to see the tests being done.


We test with a selection of natural dyes that can be found in Assam or within India in nearby states. Our intention is that artisans be self sufficient, which raises a curious point. We sell natural dyes that we import from Assam. But the artisans don't know what dyes are local or where to get them. So, in addition to a complete set of recipes for mordants, dyes and the best colour on silks we prepare a list of local dyes and where to get them in Assam or neighbouring states. This information all goes into the student books which we prepare. The books also show artisans working with dyes on the village level in other countries all over the world. It is important that the artisans not feel they are working alone or in isolation trying to master strange techniques. Moreover, most of the dye knowledge contained in the book has originally come from artisans: in a way we are giving them back their own knowledge.

We now have a sample set of silk dyed a range of colours; firsthand knowledge of how the fibers behave under dyeing conditions; student books ready with mordant recipes, dye recipes, and dye information. We are feeling prepared and ready to go.

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Testing the Silks
The Day Before the Workshop
Day One
Day Two
Day Three



In the autumn of 2008 we travelled to Assam, India to research wild silk fibers: Tussar, Eri, and the rare and prised golden Muga. The story of that trip is due to appear in the Fall 2009 issue of Wild Fibers Magazine so we can't say too much about it here ... yet. What we can tell you is that during our groundwork we noticed a keen enthusiasm by the artisans to combine the wonderful appeal of wild silks with colours derived from natural dyes.

Before leaving Assam we had laid the foundations for a natural dye workshop. The classes would be conducted soon, on Charllotte's next trip back in February 2009. We returned to Canada with enough silk to do a substantial battery of tests. Would the silk take dyes effectively? For the artisan dyer there is perhaps no greater pleasure than putting a new fiber in a dyevat. We couldn't wait to get started.

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Handloom enthusiasts are starting to get very excited about the arrival of Bappaditya Biswas for the 2009 Symposium. "Bappa" as he is known, has now risen to become one of India's top young textile designers. His innovations are sought by bollywood stars and the likes of Sonia Gandhi. They are a hot item in India's highly competitive fashion scene. Bappa works exclusively with handweaves. He has studied batik, wood block printing, and textile design to complement his love of constructing fabric. Despite the royal status of his client base, Bappa has dedicated himself to working in a rural environment with artisans who still have the traditional knowledge and the ability to push fabric in unexpected ways.

Some of you may already be familiar with cellist Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Project.

"Throughout the spring 2009 semester, educators trained at the workshop will be invited to teach the Along the Silk Road curriculum to their students. The interactive lessons draw from a variety of disciplines, offering students multiple paths to explore the many aspects of the historic Silk Road—its geography, culture, belief systems, arts, languages and commerce—and to make connections between their studies and modern cross-cultural influences in our globalized world."

Follow the links for more information about the Silk Road Project and press releases about the passion-driven education model for New York City.

We have just had a great letter from Veronica Soul. Veronica was instrumental in bringing the Maiwa Foundation to Morocco. That might be an understatment. She was the force behind connecting the needs of the Moroccan women with our resources and desire to help. She coordinated registration; sourced local suppliers of dyestuffs; searched the market for large pots, burners, and pH neutral soaps; organized the workspace and other volunteers, and kept everything organized and focused.

Veronica recently met up with Amina Yabis who was a student in the 2007 workshop. Veronica tells us that Amina took her knowledge of natural dyes and began teaching others. She is now in demand as a natural dye trainer and has conducted workshops in Taroudant, Ben Semim, Ribat El Khayr, Sefrou (2 workshops for women from the Middle Atlas, attended by 10 cooperatives), Ait Yahya Ouala, Mrirt, Timhedit, Zawiyya Sidi Abdelselem, Figuig (where she trained 37 women. The training was so successful that the 37 women had a workshop and trained 120 more women. The Figuig region is now successfully using natural dyes.) and 5 workshops in the region of Azrou.

In the old medina of Fes, there was a conference for “natural dye research specialists” from the Mediterranean region. Mr. Messaoudi (the translator for our 2007 workshop) and Amina were the only Moroccans who were invited. Amina said the participants were surprised to learn that Moroccans are using natural dyes. They didn't expect the Moroccans to know anything about natural dye techniques. Amina was so pleased to be able to talk about natural dyeing in Morocco, though there is still much work to be done.

In 2009 Amina was invited to be a vendor at the Santa Fe International Folk Art Festival. This festival is a huge event and a great way for artisans to come to know western markets. Veronica met Amina because she was now traveling in the US after the Santa Fe event. The future is looking good for Amina and she has a commission from a hotel chain in France to provide naturally-dyed shag rugs using henna and walnut.

When a workshop concludes it is very difficult to say what the students will do with their new knowledge. We couldn't ask for better news than what we received in Veronica's letter.

[Update: We have just been notified via the comments section that Amina Yabis has a website. Visit the Cherry Buttons Coop here.]

Our latest video podcast just went up.

Part 2 - Presentation
Rosemary Crill

Rosemary Crill explores "the cotton road", sibling to the well known silk road but largely dominated by India's traffic in cotton textiles. This episode presents the second part of Rosemary's lecture in which she explores India's cotton trade with the west. Printed cotton known as "chintz" changed the very fabric of life itself - especially in the British Commonwealth.

Recorded live at the Maiwa Textile Symposium 2007. This is a video podcast and it contains the images presented during the lecture.

Subscribe in iTunes
Listen to Part 1.

Indian textiles were exported to the Middle East and the ancient Roman world centuries before Europeans arrived on the subcontinent. Painted cottons and ikat-dyed silks were also sent from the medieval period onwards to Southeast Asian markets, especially in Indonesia, where they were treated as precious heirlooms.

When the Portuguese arrived in India in the wake of Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India in 1498, they lost no time in sending embroideries back to Portugal. All of these export markets dealt in textiles that had been carefully adapted to the taste of the buyers, and when the British East India Company started to trade in India in 1600, the textiles they sent back for sale in London also developed a unique style which combined British, Indian, and even Chinese elements into an exotic hybrid. The arrival of painted cottons (chintzes) took Britain by storm in the early 17th century and continued to be so popular well into the 18th century that they were even banned because they were threatening the livelihood of local linen and wool weavers.

This lecture will outline the different markets to which India exported many different types of textiles and will concentrate particularly on the craze for chintz that swept Britain and the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries. Indian muslins and the fine Kashmir shawls that were worn with them were the next great fashion to be based on Indian imports to Europe, and their origins and eventual decline in the mid-19th century will also be discussed.

Rosemary Crill

Rosemary Crill joined the Victoria and Albert Museum’s then Indian Department in 1980 and is now Senior Curator (South Asia) in the Asian Department. She lectures worldwide, specializing in Indian and Islamic textiles and dress and in Indian painting.

Her publications include Indian Ikat Textiles (1997), Colours of the Indus: Costume & Textiles of Pakistan (with Nasreen Askari, 1997), Indian Embroidery (1999), Marwar Painting: A History of the Jodhpur Style (1999), and Trade, Temple and Court: Indian Textiles from the Tapi Collection (co-author with Ruth Barnes and Steven Cohen, 2002). She has contributed to many other books, periodicals, and catalogues, including The Indian Heritage (V&A, 1982), Arts of India 1550-1900 (V&A, 1990), The Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms (V&A, 1999), and Dress in Detail from Around the World (V&A, 2002), and she has recently edited Textiles from India: The Global Trade (Kolkata, 2005) and The Making of the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art (2006).

In our last post we mentioned that we had received some of Nicole Chazaud's student materials for her fall workshop. We have since discovered that in July Nicole started a blog. Feltmakers or those looking to start feltmaking will find it a great source of inspiration. For anyone with an interest in interiors or furniture it is one blog you will want to follow.

http://FestiveFibers.blogspot.com

Here is a link to her posts that have been tagged "workshop."

And here is the Festive Fibers website. http://www.festivefibers.com/

It is about this time of year that we start to get a head start on the creation of the student booklets for the fall workshops. Some of the materials that arrive are, quite simply, amazing.

For example, we received the above photos from Nicole Chazaud who teaches the Felt Fabrics for Interiors workshop. Nicole, formerly a corporate textile designer specializing in home furnishing fabrics, has becoming a feltmaker. She enjoys this versatile, spontaneous and small-scale method of creating patterned fabrics. Her works bring life to furniture and by extension to any room that contains a piece.

Below are additional images showing the range of Nicole's work - at times it is subtle and impressionistic and at times it can pack a chromatic punch that makes the heart soar.

As of this posting Nicole's workshop is almost full but we do have one or two spaces available.

When we put together the 2009 Symposium course calendar, we are limited to one or two photos of instructor works. Its a real shame because so much of the instructor work is breaking new ground or taking a technique to a high level of refinement. And, even though we think our course calendar is beautiful, it breaks our heart to run some of the colour photos as monotones. So, in some of the posts leading up to this fall's workshops we are going to showcase the instructor work that didn't fit into the calendar.

This year Ann Johnson will be teaching two workshops; Color by Accident and Dyed to Clamp. In February of 2009 Ann had an exhibit of her work at the Boger Gallery, College of the Ozarks, Missouri "Dyed to Stitch" the works ranged from full saturated colours to beautiful explorations of natural cream and rust tones. A full set of exhibition photos is available here.

What motivates Ann's work? Here is her artist statement: "The impetus for my work is the world around me, its shapes, patterns, colors and textures. I work toward a goal in each quilt I make, having a particular concept in mind that is sometimes specific, sometimes broad. I also usually have a task, something “new” I want to try. I use many different construction techniques, traditional and contemporary, depending on the idea of the quilt, so my quilts are often very different from each other. I may start with a rough sketch, a scale drawing, a computer printout, or a paint brush and a white piece of fabric. In making the quilt, I allow the design to evolve according to the physical processes, that is, how the dye flows on the fabric, where the last curved piece ends, or how the last line of quilting makes the fabric lay. Mastering dyeing and painting fabric has allowed me to expand the kinds of quilts I can make and now, more and more frequently the fabric I dye is itself a source of inspiration for the design and structure of a quilt. I consider each piece to be a step in my growth as an artist, something I had to try, a process to learn from, never an end. I am currently pursuing several interests, for example, the action of a wave, steps and ladders, cranes and chimneys, and the spaces they create. This year I have begun to look at some of my fabrics, dyed over and over again as art cloth, finished works in themselves."

Here are three images of Ann's work that we were looking at when we put the calendar together. We find the colours, implied textures and scope of the work to be very inspiring. These images link back to Ann Johnston's gallery page on her website.

As of this posting Ann's workshops are almost full but we do have one or two spaces available.

It is the last day of the Natural dye workshop. Students receive their certificates - which they love. We review procedures, answer questions, divide up any unused dyes and mordants and consider the future. With the workshop clean and tidy the class makes a field trip to the center of town where the local carpet market takes place. After a week of dyeing and washing wool the students see the local carpets with new eyes.

This is a market for artisans to sell carpets to the vendors. All the stalls face onto a central courtyard. The artisans bring their work and men will carry the carpet on a circuit that runs in front of each vendor. If they like the piece they will motion to the man and negotiations will begin. The man will then revisit the other stalls trying to better the price. This will be the real test of our student's knowledge and understanding; when it comes time to sell their work, are they confident enough to bargain for the higher prices that a carpet made with natural dyes deserves?

Much of what we see in the market could be easily made (for less) in China. Traditional Moroccan carpets are known for their idiosyncratic designs: quirky - unlike any other carpet and distinctly Moroccan. But there is no connection between some of the acrylic, synthetically dyed, poorly woven carpets we see and Moroccan culture. And because there is no cultural connection these poor carpets will be made by whoever can make them the cheapest. This is not elitism, it is market economics. Our students can all see all of this for themselves for they have grown up with this market and they have an intimate understanding of how it works.

We have seen our students as innovators and as enthusiastic artisans leading a revival. Now, in the market we can see that the switch to natural dyes may be essential if Moroccan carpets (made by Moroccans) are going to survive. Whenever a carpet makes the rounds of the stalls that has the character of a traditional piece the haggling is intense and the price is high.

With a set of new skills, knowledge and understanding, the students are finished the workshop. We are sad to be leaving but happy with the results and feeling very privileged to have seen this side of Morocco.

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On the fourth day, with the fun work of dyeing complete the real work begins. Students separate the hanks out into bundles of threads so that each student will complete the course with a full range of colours on wool. These must each be labeled with the dyes used. Some of the labels are in French, some in Arabic, and some in the Berber dialects. The students receive their books (if books are handed out on the first day students tend to leave with the book and not complete the course). The bundles of threads are made by everyone and piled onto a table. Each student receives a workshop book and a bundle of yarns clearly sorted and labeled.

By this time, with the range of naturally-dyed colours sitting in front of them, the craftspeople are feeling confident. They have created these colours themselves and they now have a very good sense of what can be done with natural dyes. There is much vagueness around dyeing and misinformation abounds. For example, the local market sells a blue powder called "indigo." When we tested it we found that it is what would be called "blueing" a common laundry additive that is used to remove the yellow or cream cast of white fabrics. When you hold it in your hands it is very similar to the dye indigo. But if you try to dye with it all the blue colour will wash out. The misinformation is the result of lost knowledge - it is not malicious. The person selling the blueing as indigo does is not aware of the difference.

The students compile notes into the workbooks. They have completed four full days of natural dye work and they are excited to see what will happen on the last day.


























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The third day. Once again the previous days dyeing is thoroughly washed out in the morning and hung to dry. With colours now coming from combinations of dyes it is very important to label the hanks. The key to consistent colour is often careful note-taking. We record the concentration of dye (expressed as a percentage of weight-of-fiber or "WOF") and the dye sequence, for example, pomegranate over cochineal.


Today is the day we have all been waiting for, because today we learn to use indigo. Really, indigo is so much fun that one must be careful where one puts it when planning a workshop - the enthusiasm is high and everything ends up being immersed in the dyepot - it is just so tempting to turn things blue.

We have a wonderful set of light cotton scarves to work with before we turn to the serious work of dyeing hanks of wool. Right away it is evident that students understand the concept of tied resist and they begin to experiment. The volunteers are having just as much fun as the students and one or two shirts go into the dye pot.

With almost the entire group sporting new indigo head scarves we return to the wool and complete our colours by adding indigo blue. Greens are obtained by overdying some of the yellows that we made the previous day.


















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