Natural Dye-making – How to Forage for Colour
I first became interested in natural dye-making many years ago when I started researching how the monks wrote the Book of Kells.
When I discovered that the monks used natural dyes in their artwork, I immediately wanted to learn how to make those dyes myself.
Natural Dyes in Irish Manuscripts
The monks who wrote early Irish Christian manuscripts used oak gall for the black/brown writing they produced, and they would have drawn from a variety of minerals and plants to produce the vivid colours that the Book of Kells contains. For example, they would have used woad for blues, weld for yellow, and lady bedstraw for reds.
The oak tree was sacred in pre-Christian times as a symbol of wisdom, strength and endurance, and it still carried importance for early Christians in Ireland. But oak was also sacred to the monks because it provided the ink they used to write and decorate their books and manuscripts.
More colours were introduced to Ireland when crusaders returned from Palestine in medieval times. They brought with them indigo, madder and other dyes developed around the world.
But, before that, during the Golden Age of Irish Saints & Scholars, Irish monks drew their colours and ideas about how to produce them from Europe, where they gathered ideas and dyeing techniques as wandered through different communities and landscapes spreading Christianity.
The monks in Ireland were able to make use of all this knowledge, which gave them new recipes for ink and new ways to illuminate manuscripts with colour.
While we might tend to have an image of early Christian writers as men and monks, it is worth remembering that saints like St Brigid wrote some of the first illuminated books in Ireland.
St Brigid wrote and made her mark in her centre of arts at the Church of the Oak monastery in Kildare, a detail often forgotten.
The example of this amazing, creative Kildare woman is a great source of inspiration to me and the people I teach!
Foraging for Art Supplies
A lot of artists today import dyes to access a fabulous range of bright colours, but people used to source colour much closer to home. The arrival of commercial inks and dyes in the 20th century made a wide range of tempting colours easily available, but it also meant that the art of natural dye making was in danger of being lost in Ireland.
A growing interest in sustainability and natural materials has brought traditional dye-making skills back into the spotlight, reminding us that we can look to our local landscapes for resources as well as inspiration!
Foraging for food has been back in fashion for a while, but did you realise you can forage art materials too?
As a heritage artist, I’m always fascinated by traditional art practices and the way they get passed from generation. I grew up in the Irish countryside, so foraging for herbal remedies was a part of my childhood, but I’d never gone foraging for colour.
I’ve always been inspired by water and the colours in the Kildare landscape through the changing seasons. When I think of natural colour, I always picture the nearby bog, which is one of my favourite places. It has a changing array of hues throughout the year, from autumn shades of amber through to the pinks and blues of summer.
Even as a child, I wanted to be able to harness those colours and use them in my art.
When I began trying to source natural local colours, I had to learn dye-making and find out the best and most sustainable ways to harvest colour responsibly from native Irish plants in Ireland’s Ancient East.
How do you make dyes out of plants?
We are lucky in Ireland that we have a mild climate and plenty of rain. Though we don’t always appreciate it, this means that we have the perfect conditions for growing plants for dyes or ink-making.
I always say to the children I work with as an artist in schools that photos in history books may be in black and white but the Irish were always a colourful nation!
Here in Kildare, I forage in the Bog of Allen near my house. I also grow woad, chamomile and indigo. Woad is extremely invasive though, so take care if you do plant it in your own dye garden!, I’ve also made dyes from nettles, heather, oak galls, berries, and flowers.
Berries and flowers give you what are known as fugitive colours, and their dyes are often dismissed as they fade. They don’t have the longevity of dyes from other plants and trees. Don’t let this put you off though!
It is worth sticking with them though, because you can produce such beautiful colours from elderberries, for example. Sometimes the fact that they fade in interesting ways adds to their beauty too.
The colours may be fugitive, but they aren’t looking to make a quick getaway – I have elderberry prints I made 3 years ago which are still very strong.
Uses for Natural Dyes
Natural dyes can either be used to colour plant-based fibre such as paper and cotton, or animal-based fibres, such as wool.
Once you start exploring the use of plants for pigment and begin using them on different materials, you will get a sense of the scope of the process. Even the time you spend waiting for colour to develop is very rewarding, and the colours from nature will constantly surprise you!
I never stop learning and improving my techniques, and I’m thrilled to see people who’ve attended my workshops putting their skills to use long after they’ve headed home from my studio!
My passion for dyeing has only increased since I started passing on dye making techniques in my eco-printing workshops, and I love to hear from the people who take part about where their interest in dye-making came from and local dye-making traditions they know about elsewhere in Ireland.
It’s wonderful to know that people who learn dye-making skills with me can practise their art more sustainably than they did before. Lots of art materials use harmful mass-produced chemicals that have no connection with place or past. You would be surprised what goes into crayons, for example!
What is Eco-printing?
Eco printing describes the process of making botanical art prints by fixing the natural pigments, tannins and acids that leaves naturally contain on paper or fabric.
I stock a range of handmade Japanese Awagami papers, and I love to use Awagami Bamboo paper for my eco-printing on paper.
My natural dye and eco-printing on paper workshop is a lovely introduction to the basics of natural dyeing on plant-based fibres. You create 2 pieces of botanical art at the workshop, which is ideal for anyone with an interest in eco-practices, natural dyeing, inkmaking, or making art from nature!
Every single print is unique, and so it is always a joy at the end of a workshop to see the variety and beauty of the prints everyone has created from Kildare colours.
For people who join a workshop, the experience is often the beginning of a love affair with natural dyes and eco-printing. It certainly was for me! Learning about the basics of natural dye processes gave me the foundations to continue into ink-making, which I’ll talk about further in a later blog post. I would say, if you are interested in both, then research and practice natural dyeing first, as it makes a great foundation for exploring natural colour.
Decorative Uses for Natural Dyes
Many people ask what I do with all the prints I create in my natural dye and eco-printing experiments! There are lots of ways they can be enjoyed, but I love to use my eco-prints in my bookbinding work where they go to make book covers or act as separators.
Natural dye eco-prints also make beautiful botanical prints, and it’s lovely to know that nature prints made here at my creative workshops from dyes sourced in the Kildare landscape are adorning walls across Ireland and beyond.