She had set up and worked for over 15 years in an NGO that supported vulnerable craft livelihoods where before completing her doctoral thesis titled “Towards a theory of innovation for handloom weaving in India” in the University of Maastricht in 2016. The craze for indigo continues today. Ten years on, it is 2012, and I am theorising innovation in craft practices, as part of my PhD study –analysing the practices of dyers as socio-technical expertise.
How does one establish that, without explicating his knowledge in scientific terms? The longer the indigo mixture is left to ferment, the darker it turns. Traditionally, cloth dyed with its fermented leaves holds a place in every life stage. A digital resources portal for the humanities and social sciences, Medicinal Receipts Research Group History, Eighteenth-Century French Manuscript Remedy Collections.
Regular stirring ensures the process continues.
With these techniques BUAISOU creates minimal and timeless pieces, and through the collaboration with brands around the world, the farm and natural dye studio works to revive the artisanal approach of using natural indigo dye.
Yesterday it was minus 7 in the morning and cold enough to start fermenting last year's indigo leaves into indigo compost. ‘My car is technical, but I don’t need a manual’ he jokes, even as he measures out quantities out aloud for me to write into the journal we keep of all the dye experiments. BUAISOU uses ramie for the hand-stitched buttonhole.
Traditionally, the Lao believed that the dye was female, and that it fermented because it attracted a male spirit. After using the recipe on the field in a series of training workshops for weavers, he makes an observation.
The aim of my own analysis was to establish that Salim like many other master dyers before and after him has indeed mastered the principles of Indigo dyeing.
Manuscript Remedy Collections in Welsh Archives. January 2018.
The highest tank is where the fresh leaves are placed along with an enzyme called indimulsin, which breaks the indicant down into indoxyl and glucose. Women wanting to conceive a child wear a skirt dyed with the fermented leaves to increase their fertility, and when they do conceive, lay their babies down to sleep in indigo-dyed sheets to open their young minds. They also have a wonderful informative website on natural dyes. Third part of the leaves will spend the next few days fermenting in the sun before I can tell you if it works and makes any sense. ‘Change the recipe standard to 4.5 kg, not one kg, if you want a stardardised recipe’. The chemical compound indican contained in the raw leaves is converted into indigo by fermenting the leaves.
Using the fresh leaves creates a green dye, fermenting them for at least five days and adding limestone as a mordant gives a blue dye. I will keep you posted about my experiments. Three years ago I attended the natural dye symposium in Madagascar, where I first met Hisako Sumi who started me on my current journey of making and maintaining indigo fermentation vats. Using the fresh leaves creates a green dye, fermenting them for at least five days and adding limestone as a mordant gives a blue dye. Salim smoked incessantly, yet he could blow on an open wood fire under the dyebath to keep it at a steady 70 degrees for as long as it took to extract the colour –whether yellow, brown or red.
The dye, sukumo, is produced in the Awa district of the Tokushima prefecture. We knocked together a new wooden fermentation box and gathered some oak leaves in the crisp morning to line the box with. The team uses traditional techniques: Tie-Dyeing (Shibori Zome), Clamp Resist Dyeing (Itajime), Batik (Roketsu Zome), Stencil Dyeing (Kata Zome), Discharge Dyeing (Bassen), Gradation Dyeing (Dan Zome) and Plane Dyeing (Beta-Zome).
‘Come to learn Indigo dyeing?’ he asks with a smile. Alternatively, a rare indigenous plant, mak bow or bow vine, can be added to the blue dye to create mauve.
You can learn more about BUAISOU’s work and processes through the links below. I take out my laptop, ‘put your hand in’ he says instead, ‘and turn the yarn 50 times’. Annapurna Mamidipudi was trained as an engineer in electronics and communications, in Manipal, in South India.
All photographs: ©︎Kyoko Nishimoto All Rights Reserved. Fermenting indigo at Ock Pop Tock, Laos. The fermentation is actually a naturally occurring oxidation process, with atmospheric oxygen as the oxidant. All I can speculate is that the knowledge of the principles governing Indigo are known by Salim much like the numbers themselves are known in the dyeing: when dyers learn to count on their bodies, the numbers on the piece of paper disappear. Following a 600-year-old Japanese tradition, the dye is made by fermenting leaves from the mature indigo. Process of drying and fermenting indigo leaves is known as "sukumo".
There, I discovered that there is more indigo besides Indigofera, and that one indigo plant can give many more dyes than just blue. 28 grams regular old wheat bran (I made it by milling and sifting some grain of wheat). As I was harvesting P ersicaria tinctoria leaves in the garden, I was reminded of the fresh leaf indigo dyeing that we saw being done in Madagascar. I love green hues and wanted to make a dye from start to finish, so I chose to dye my scarf ‘indigo’ green. Unpractised as I am, I lose count after 37, but Salim tells me when I can stop, he can see when the colour is right. First measure out the quantity of dye material……. Traditionally, the Lao believed that the dye was female, and that it fermented because it … It is dyed with their own persimmon juice solution that is distilled for 5 years. Wood ash (ash lye or aku) and lime are used to control the alkaline levels of the dye stuff. Sake and fusuma facilitate the fermentation process. For one kg. In Japan, the process of drying and fermenting indigo leaves is known as "sukumo". He is meticulous in checking the vats every morning and evening. I continue to be the documenter of recipes, now trying to author a small booklet of recipes in the four South Indian vernacular languages, for craftspeople learning natural dye colours. BUAISOU upholds the value of the unique, handcrafted art of dyeing with indigo, whilst modernising their garment collection with minimalist design and sharing the beauty of natural dyeing around the world. I change the recipe; we now formulate all recipes with 4.5 kg as the base.
In the future, with the same dedication and care, BUAISOU aims to grow their own cotton and weave hand-dyed garments themselves. Salim was a 20 something driver, the same age as me, when I met him in 1990. ‘Yellappa is a master, [the 80 year old Indigo dyer who taught Salim] he doesn’t need the paper’, he says, a little enviously, ‘he can count on his nose to tell him when the vat is ready’.
View fullsize . The idea was to use these recipes to bring natural dyeing practices lost over the last century back into the practice of craftspeople, in order to enter newly emerging green markets and support their livelihoods. Salim is a tad more portly, and is surrounded by a bevy of young men and women dyeing Indigo. ‘But they only use the 4.5 kg standard, or multiples of it, so if you write those down in the recipe, they don’t need to learn how to calculate percentages’.
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