Top left: my upper robe (with it’s strange purple tinge) Bottom left: my lower robe (which is what I’m ideally aiming for) Middle bottom (scrunched up): The off-cut from my faded work robe which I used as a base for the darkest colour.
My 3 tests (L-R):
Darkest is my faded lower robe which was ‘overdyed’,
middle is white cotton drill
White cotton drill straight from the scraps box with no preparation.
1 & 2 were prepared by a quick scour in washing soda and detergent and 24 hour soak in soy which I dried and cured for 48hrs-ish. No alum or iron was added.
I’ve been eyeing off the grass trees too, but think that this Marri tree project is heading the right way.
I emailed Sally Blake to ask her about colourfastness, she suggested that the colour, once worn in would last as long as a commercial dye. My first test (not pictured), from wandoo leaves, came out too light but the colour has faded no further over 10 washes. I will patch a small bit of the test pieces in this photo onto my work robe once it’s cured and see how it goes.
I chose to use iron (with my wandoo test) to get the dark chocolate colour that we wear. It didn’t seem to sadden the colour but just darken it. Oops no photos of that one. I think in my new Marri test, adding alum would probably give a brighter colour which would be beneficial to making the more orange colour required for the monks robes.
One of the nuns tells me that while Ven. Dhammajiva was here, he found a large chunk of resin from the Marri tree and took it back to SL and was able to reproduce his dark orange colour just from that. I didn’t hear how colourfast it was. Therefor my plan is to collect a large quantity of bark(2-3 shopping bags ~ 8-10kg) from the sappy part of the tree and maybe 1/2 cup of resin crumbs and then try to reduce this to a super concentrate. I will probably add some leaves as I read somewhere it adds to the colourfastness. I will also do some test with messing with the pH of the cloth using the washing soda, so see if I can get it to take a bit more dye that way.
Ven @Pasanna This is the suggestion that you quoted to me when we were discussing grass tree resin. You may remember me mentioning an all black painting I saw in the AGWA done with grass tree resin.
I first consulted Google, which has the incorrect information that the resin comes from the flower spears. I then consulted one of the Fine Art lecturers at Curtin University who directed me to the trunk, as Ven Akaliko suggests. She described how it oozes out from between the thinggies on the outside of the trunk and demonstrated how she twists them off. She said to put them in a glass jar and dissolve them in mentholated spirits to use as a lacquer or paint; but she had no experience of using them for dyeing and couldn’t suggest a mordant.
I subsequently found these trees somewhere between Perth and Pemberton; I harvested some which I hope to share with you in due course. Notice how different the third image of a young tree with its tiny drops is from the older tree above.
For folks in North America, the Osage orange tree is a cousin of jack and was also used by the first nations people as a dye. I’ve never tried, though.
@Gillian I’ve been looking up the skirts of grass trees and still haven’t seen any sap, but I’m keen to try an mixture of mari and grass tree sap for my next experiment… whenever that’ll be.
We have a friend of a supporter who has a black walnut tree. I’m waiting until the end of summer to have a crack. Will see how big the tree is.
Once I’ve worked out how to deal with it and have an actual plan, we might just be able to freeze dry Sydney black walnut for the Australian monastic dye supply chain. Mebbe.
I think sap and resin are different things. The resin I found was mainly below hem level. I’d love to meet a botanist who could explain what the conditions are that prompt the resin to flow.
Do you know how the woman in the video made the paste from the walnuts and what her mordant was? Also I couldn’t catch what was in the final bath; did she say “tomato “?
I haven’t actually accomplished successful black walnut dying yet. I guess the paste is made on the basis of the powdered walnut, whereas we will be using the nuts straight.
I suspect the black walnut is pretty intense and will get on everything, but will do better with iron mordant on cotton (either presoak or in dye bath). No mordant required for wool and silk. From the videos I’ve seen, it’ll still work without a mordant but the colour may be weak.
Second bath is madder- not strictly necessary, just to make a pretty colour.
Sap: liquid that is associated with nutrient/water transport ( xylem and phloem vessels). Think maple syrup before it becomes a syrup by boiling and concentrating it.
Resin: totally different in that it is usually produced in response to injury, attack by predators etc. Can be very viscous compounds( basically stinky to us and insects and are usually anti bacterial/pathogenic )
eg frankincense, pine trees usually have resin oozing after you cut off a branch.
(P.S. Something I learned about clothes (dyed cotton sārees for eg) with natural dyes, soaking them in a salt bath helps retain colour in future washes. I use bucket for them anyway so rarely soak them in soap longer than necessary)
I would think you could use local bark and leaves too.
I found this list of 6 local/native? trees in the Paramatta area and if you combine it with Sally Blake’s database of eucalyptus dyes you should be able to find a colour which is agreeable to you. The colour she lists for linen is roughly what you’ll get on cotton (with a soy pre-soak).
From the list these two stand out as top candidates:
The Corymbia maculata (Spotted Gum) is a cousin of our Marri tree, which we’ve used. From what I remember from reading Dyemaking with eucalypts / [by] Jean K. Carman Corymbia bark is an excellent source of colour. Sally Blake doesn’t list swatches for the bark for the spotted gum, but if it’s similar to our Marri then the end of vassa is the time to collect the shards of sappy goodness which rub off or if you’re lucky they can be found on the ground below.
Magnolia Little Gem. This yarn, dyed with magnolia leaves (apparently they’re on Wigram st?) looks like a perfect robe colour if you could get it to stick to cotton.
Being a freelance monastic you can find a local tree which gives a good colour and make this your colour. I’m more limited as I’m trying to work backwards to get a specific colour.
Does anyone know more about mahogany dyeing? Bhante @Snowbird?
The only reason I am asking is because it’s actually possible to just order bulk mahogany bark online due to its use in Africa as a herbal medicine. (As opposed to jack heartwood, which it is not possible to order).
The European way of extracting dye from mahogany bark seems to involve alcohol, which I don’t think is the SL way. wooddyeinstructions_230128_135144.pdf (72.0 KB)
Thanks so much Ayya @Charlotteannun Sudhamma: we had stumbled on the same video! I’ve since received proper mahogany instructions from friends of a bhikkhuni friend at an SL forest monastery. But I don’t have permission to republish as is, I will have to communicate further to get correct permissions. Mahogany bark dyeing appears to be quite similar to jack heartwood, apart from that it’s the bark used, and there is a special mould proofing process. We wondered about importing the bottled dye, but we were not sure about customs/biosecurity. If anyone would like to do this from SL it could be a small industry.
The lady in the video may have gotten weak results with the mahogany on cotton due to not using the bark, repeat dyeing may also be necessary.
Actually, a number of Australian gums, like red ironbark, have a similarly high tannin content to mahogany in the bark (up to 45% tannin) as Ayya Pasanna has already alerted us.
Since then, I realised that Australia also has a number of plants used in Indonesian/Malaysian batik etc, like ceriops (mangrove). We have some Asian plants here too. Red mangrove grows locally im NSW but is a protected species (limited regulated legal harvesting in Indonesia?), I am not sure about exemptions for harvesting for personal use on private land in nsw. I would also like to try ceriops and symplocos (natural plant mordant from Indonesia) as the prospect of just buying it commercially is attractive.
