Ethel Mairet was a weaver and a natural dyer. In 1916 she wrote a book about natural dyeing. In the book’s introduction, she complained that since the advent of the coal based dyes the knowledge of natural dyes had been lost. Coal based dyes were introduced around 1850.
This was in 1916 !
She also stated that both natural and chemical dyes fade. But when natural dyes fade they produce paler shades of the original colour. Chemical dyes, she claimed, fade to different colours, generally bad ones.
Her book and her work are being celebrated by an exhibition at the Ditchling museum of art and craft. The exhibition is called ” Contemporary makers celebrate Ethel Mairet’s legacy. ” I am one of the contemporary makers.
As a contemporary maker, I have to dye a skein of fibre using natural dyes. I can use either a recipe of Ethel’s or my own recipe. I chose to dye silk using a recipe of my own with alder cones.
The alder cones were first steeped for 24 hours, then heated for about 1 hour at 60 C. This cooking was followed by another 24 hours steeping. In parallel, I placed the silk skein and some other fibres to soak in water for 24 hours. After waiting I strained off the alder cones and I added the wetted fabrics and fibres to the alder cones dye extraction. The mix was now a lovely nutty brown colour. The mixture of dye liquor and fibres was heated again for about an hour keeping the temperature around 60 C.
Then I left the whole mixture to cool and to continue dyeing for another day. Finally, the fibres were rinsed, spun and dried.
Ethel Mairet comments that the chemical dye process was quicker than the natural dye process. My small process has taken in total about three days of elapsed time and there are certainly a lot of steps.
Here is the alder cone dyed silk. Now it just needs to be labelled and sent back to the Ditchling museum to be added to the exhibition.
You can see the work in progress of all the other contemporary dyers if you visit this Pinterest board.
Ditchling is a little far away for me to visit but I hope the exhibition will go on tour and I will be able to see it soon. It is great to take part in this recreation of history and interesting to reflect that 100 years ago Ethel was stating that natural dye knowledge had been lost.
