Mud dyeing is a technique that is said to be at least 1300 years old. Today it is most famously practiced on Amami Island in Japan. I became interested in this technique when I was just reading and watching videos on different natural dyeing techniques. I saw videos of these people on this island washing garments in these muddy pools and as I was watching it struck me how very similar looking the setting was to parts of Willows where I grew up.
I say that and some people who have been to Willows may think, there is no way Willows looks like this beautiful island in the Pacific and yes the vegetation, climate, terrain are all very different. What was similar was the muddy pools, canals, and structures on this island where these people were dying this material and how similar it looked to my Va’s(grandma in Portuguese) house where I spent many summers playing in the barn and swimming in the canals. I thought, why can’t I mud dye in that canal? This is the result.
The term mud dyeing is a bit of a misnomer as the garments in the case of this particular project were already dyed using the heartwood of a logwood tree (purple) and dried walnut husks (light brown). The mud in this scenario is used to start a chemical reaction and alter the colors that were already dyed into the fabric. The mud that was used to do this was scraped from the bottom and bank of an irrigation canal behind my Va’s house. Any place next to a stream or within a body of moving water is where you will find clay. Clay is what you want when trying to mud dye. Clay contains iron which reacts with the tannins in the dye material that I used.
Walnut contains a lot of tannins and so once the fabric has been dyed with walnut it is rinsed in the mud bath and the fabric will react with the iron in the mud and change the color of the jacket slightly. It also is used to make the fabric more lightfast. Making fabric more lightfast and/or colorfast can be done other ways, mud dying is just one technique. I chose to mud dye as it not only makes the fabric more lightfast, it can create very muted, earthy colors which is what I like in my clothes. For the logwood dyed jacket, the logwood dye material doesn’t contain tannin, so those materials had to be soaked in a tannin bath before it was dyed with the logwood. I used ground oak gallnut as my source of tannins.
Natural dyeing is cool and interesting to me because the raw material whether it be walnut, logwood, pomegranate, alkanet root, etc. are different depending on where it comes from. Like those materials there are also many different types of mud and clay, and the color it produces will be different depending on where it comes from. Natural dyeing is a centuries old process and many cultures have their own techniques and raw materials that they utilize. I once read that natural dye is a lot like wine making, where the grapes come from, the soil, the year it’s made, all of it has an effect on how the wine tastes and smells. Naturally dyed fabric and garments are different every time depending on the fabric, the dye material and where it came from and it creates something that is very unique and can be traced to some place. These garments can be traced back to where I grew up, where I spent my summers, where my Va still lives and 35 miles from where I currently live. My family helped me dye this stuff as well as one of my best friends who also grew up in Willows and this to me is what makes it special, this is what makes something luxury and truly unique.
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