Natural Dyeing: A Heritage of Colour at the V&A

It’s been an incredibly busy few weeks for us, but as we sit this weekend, a little dazed and exhausted, I can safely say our course ‘Natural Dyeing: A Heritage of Colour‘ at the V&A Academy couldn’t have gone better! There was a huge amount of preparation involved in getting ready to teach a comprehensive natural dyeing course and we spent a week and a half scouring and mordanting, measuring and winding silk, wool, linen and cotton yarns and fabric samples. We treated ourselves to some new pots which were the maximum diameter the would fit the V&A burners and as deep as we could get.

With 16 students in the group, we prepared half of the class samples at home the week before. We used five substantive dyes (Buddleia, Walnut Hulls, Pomegranate Rind, Rhubarb Root and Buckthorn bark) and five adjective dyes (Weld, Logwood, Sappanwood, Madder and Cochineal) with alum acetate as our mordent and Oak Galls as a tannin mordent. Ross also prepped our Indigo Vat, affectionately nicknamed ‘Old Stinky’ in class, which has been on the go since 2019. We also assembled two car loads of necessary equipment to take to the Museum and set up over the weekend to be ready for the Monday morning start.

Though the class was larger than we would usually teach, they were such a great bunch of people. We had painters and textile artists, artisans, knitters, silk experts and people supporting traditional practices. With a whole range of experiences and nationalities from all over the globe (Equator, Chile, the US, New Zealand, Canada and the Netherlands as well as all over the the UK) it was a wonderful eclectic mix of personalities and it was a joy to spend time with the students. They were keen and attentive and always engaged.

Our first day was information heavy, with an introduction to natural dyeing and its history as well as fabric preparation (scouring and mordanting) and the use of modifiers and in the afternoon they got their first taste of dyeing. Buddleia, also known as the butterfly bush, springs up in urban areas all over the place and is a great first experience of natural dyeing as it’s really easy to find. The dried flowers give excellent colour (whether white, pink or purple the yellow they produce is the same) which means you don’t need to touch the flowers in bloom which insects love.

The second day we tackled the other four substantive dyes, and looked at the effect of modifiers (acid, alkali, iron and copper water) in class to push the colour in different ways and expand the colour spectrum available from each resource. We also used the small amount of Japanese Indigo that we had grown on our balcony (we really miss the dye garden) to demonstrate how to achieve the wonderful deep distinctive turquoise colour. Three solar jars using dyers coreopsis, white onions skins and rudbeckia were created to illustrate cold water dyeing using the simplest of methods, time, which we returned to at the end of the week. We also set up a completely unscientific experiment comparing the tannin properties of Oak Galls against the lighter coloured Pomegranate rind for use as a tannin mordant.

On the third day we looked at the adjective dyes, using the fabric samples that we had mordanted the week before. These can be a little more complicated with some materials needing steeping before hand and others such as Madder requiring a little extra help in other ways and more attention whilst dyeing. The end of the afternoon was taken up with the creation of our small cards. Cochineal we left till the start of the fourth day due to the different extraction method required. The group were then taken on a guided gallery tour with curator Susan North looking at naturally dyed garments in the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries and the British Galleries. In the afternoon we discussed Indigo and used ‘old stinky’ as well as outlining how to prepare a 123 Vat. Our final day encompassed Contact Printing, a talk on the history of Indian natural dyeing and the opportunity to see some Indian fabrics from the collection with curator Avalon Fotheringham, as well as some quick indigo shibori experiments and the completion of the last of our sample cards.

It was an intensive week and we were all exhausted by the end of it, some of us barely able to string a sentence together, but the consensus was that it had been a wonderful week. We received lovely feedback with one student saying it was the best course she’d ever been on! Once back home, we have spent the weekend taking it easy with Ross using the exhaust dyes and over-dyeing with the indigo vat to create some beautiful colours, and I finished processing the images I’d taken and sat and wrote this.

We would both like to thank our great friend and teacher, the wonderful Jenny Dean, whose book we uses as the basis for this course, for all her ongoing help and support. A big shout out also goes to Liza Mackenzie, our V&A Academy producer (and Indigo grower and dyer herself) for supporting us and helping make the course a reality. If you missed this opportunity, contact the V&A Academy to register your interest – 2024 is just around the corner!

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