A kind of alchemy
How colors appear, alter, emerge, transfer, and transmute…
Natural dyeing was always something that intrigued me. I secretly wished that I could be that person who knew how and understood how to transform plants to colors for fabrics. I knew it wasn’t a simple thing. I felt like I needed a class, or other people’s guidance, or I don’t know what. And so it remained unattainable for a long time.
Showing me their way
It wasn’t until I returned to Laos and met amazing natural dyers who showed me how by showing me their way. First in 2017, at a lively, tucked-away place on the outskirts of Vientiane. My three days of learning how to make color, weave threads, and dye textiles at Houey Hong Vocational Training Center offered me a glimpse into Lao heritage craft traditions.
Check out this slideshow video about my experience there!
And this is how I wrote about it:
“ash-making with medicinal leaves
best with flowing river and rain water
copper juice of rusty nails and vinegar
wood burning, smoke-filled spaces
marigold boiling and brewing
waiting. takes patience
feeling water, pinching thread
sensing time without clocks
knowing its ready and right
an art and science
and alchemy”
Then in 2019 I returned to Laos again, to spend a few days at a creative oasis in northern Laos, at Ban Lue Handicrafts & Homestay Center in Nayang Nua. There I met master dyer, Mae Sang, who showed me her ways.
Mae Sang pulling mango leaves from a tree at the handicrafts center. Then the mango leaves are boiled for a couple hours, creating a wonderful sweet yellow for dyeing woven cotton.
In February 2020, I returned to Ban Lue Handicrafts & Homestay Center again, and spent more time learning natural dyeing from Mae Sang.
I wrote this: “This red. This rich, saturated, and ‘bloody’ natural dye coming from the bulbous red taro root creates a lovely range of pinkish rose to deepening blush. And the master dyer, Mae Sang, knows how to get the color mood just right. She knows how long to boil the red taro, with what kind of flame, and she can tell by the wet color how the dry color will look. Such an honor to spend time with her and observe her ways of intimately sensing and knowing natural colors.”
In my own way
It made me all the more aware how local, traditional, and beautifully expert everything was. I was exposed to the master dyers in Laos. It inspired me, and also intimidated me. If I was to do natural dyeing, I needed to make it local to me, and in my amateur way just try it.
I came across a book this summer that started me thinking that I could actually try natural dyeing in a really simple way on my own. “Botanical Colour at your Fingertips” by artist Rebecca Desnos made it look straightforward without a huge effort. I could do this, I thought. I bought the equipment – aluminum pot, pail, bowl, strainer, wooden spoons, and soymilk.
The preparation in pale, unappealing colors. I found the natural handmade Lao cotton fabric that I was keen to try, cut a small-ish swatch of it from the bolt, and washed it mildly. Next, I soaked the fabric for 12 hours in very diluted soymilk, which is used as a mordant to help bind the color to the fabric.
Eucalyptus leaves collected, layered and beautifully pastel. I chose eucalyptus leaves to extract the color from because there was a picture of it in the book and I had some in my collection. I was dubious about using other dried leaves, bark, pods, or stems until I knew more (the author cautioned about knowing if your plants are toxic or not). Honestly I had no idea about eucalyptus. It’s native to Australia. So much for going local. Unless I count my local Trader Joe’s, where I picked up a couple of bunches a while back.
What began to interest me the most in this whole super slow multi-day process was how the colors appeared, altered, emerged, transferred, and transmuted. The fabric, leaves, aluminum pot, heat, time, and water were factors that acted upon and were interacted with. Alchemy was happening.
Eucalyptus leaves mirroring and distorted, jagged and irregular. Cutting up the leaves in a shiny stainless steel bowl, the colors of the eucalyptus change again.
Eucalyptus leaves – lighter, suspended, gliding on water. Floating in a big aluminum pot, the colors change again.
Deep hickory-colored leaves give away a light amber liquid. After three hours over low heat, other colors emerge.
A deep liquid, the color of mahogany, reflecting both what holds it and what held it. Straining the saturated warm eucalyptus leaves through cheesecloth.
It takes in the sun and reflects the leaves, this amber-mahogany alchemical color. Straining the liquid through muslin cloth on another pass, then taking it outside to see the colors.
The fabric immersed and absorbed in this amber-mahogany color, and what binds to its fibers is a yellow-butterscotch color instead. The Lao cotton fabric soaked for two days outside and I stirred it a few times.
This yellow-butterscotch color, and how I didn’t know eucalyptus leaves could do this. Fully dyed and dried and folded and taking in the sun outside, another kind of alchemy.
A kind of alchemy
My sweetie John asked me this morning, “What are you working on today?” and I told him about writing about the natural dyeing process, that the actual process was less interesting, and what was more interesting was seeing how there was this kind of alchemy happening in the colors that I knew nothing about beforehand.
He said, “Here you are working with natural objects that change and transmute, which is such a different kind of interaction you have with so many other kinds of natural objects you work with.” I loved hearing this. It was affirming, recognizing that this was different, that there was a kind of alchemy happening. Not directly, not entirely, but kind of, which was all I needed to hear.
So I had to look up the word alchemy, in that figurative sense of “any seemingly magical process of transforming or combining elements into something new.” (source) (There’s a lot more information on its history and philosophy here if you’re curious.) According to Jungian analytical psychology, I also understood alchemy as a symbolic process towards one’s individuation when I took a few intense courses to work through my own process a couple of years ago.
The yellow-butterscotch color of the fabric is slightly uneven. I guess I didn’t stir it enough to get every spot fully. Life is like that, isn’t it. We have some spots, and they never really get incorporated well into our whole being. It becomes the color of us, with all our unevenness, where alchemy is still happening.
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Colorfully uneven...
LouLou
