The Art of Weaving in Colour
WEAVING IN COLOUR
We wish that we could place this fabric in your hands. This cloth has a story and that story is best told by the cloth itself. But these are unusual times, and so we will attempt to share this story with photos and words.
HOW WEAVERS CREATE NEW COLOURS
Our revival of natural dyes among a key group of weavers in Bengal, India, started with indigo. But it quickly spread to the other dyes that have seen significant historic use and were available locally. We worked with madder and hibiscus and cutch – to name a few. Now, a dyer and a weaver approach colour very differently. As dyers we would work on variations of the mordant process or the dyeing process or combinations of different dyes — we know so many ways to manipulate colour in a dye pot. But the weavers have their own ways with colour, and so starting with only a handful of different colours they set to work blending colours through the weaving process itself.
Colours could be combined through warping the loom with one colour and using a different colour in the weft. Many variations on this could be achieved by using two different colours in the warp, side by side, and a third colour in the weft. There are so many options. The threads are so fine that the result is not a stripe but rather an undulating sense of colour like that found in nature — with a complex voice that will show subtle changes in different lights. All the colours you see here are achieved in this way.
NEW CLOTHING
This year’s holiday shipping times are going to be difficult to predict.
For international shipping,
please plan ahead and allow a generous amount of time.
To our U.S. customers – don't forget that the exchange rate works in your favour, it's like an extra discount.
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