A Gift from the Herbs: Plant Dyes

It’s a gray day in July. It's supposed to be summer. Outside the skies are clotted with thick gray clouds, weeping a warm rain now and again. It’s pretty gloomy, especially since this summer has been like that: lots of gray, not much color.

But in my friend Rain’s house, there is a riot of color: on her stove, simmering away, we have pots of color. St. John’s wort flower makes a clear ruby red, while red cabbage is giving us a eyeful of purple. And on the back burner, the bright green horsetail bubbling away produces a yellow green. So what’s this all about? A group of herbalist friends have come together to experiment with using herbs as dye plants. This is a first for all of us and we are thrilled.

Among the four of us, we represent about 70 years of herbal experience, from a wide range of backgrounds. Rain Delvin is an Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) acupuncturist, who has a long background in western herbs as well. Susan Monaco is also a TCM acupuncturist, who puts as much emphasis on the use of Chinese herbs for healing, as she does the needles. Joanna Kaye is a Plant Spirit Medicine practitioner of over 20 years experience who is deeply connected to the energy and spirit of the plants. (Here is Joanna, stirring the red cabbage dye. (I think of the quote from MacBeth: Double, double boil, and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble...) And I have already talked on this blog about my western and Ayurvedic herb background, and my work in Plant Spirit Medicine.

With all these years of experience we have with plants, it’s pretty surprising that none of us have ever worked with plant dyes. But maybe not so surprising: I remember from the 1960’s watching my grandma take a packet of Rit dye to color some article of clothing. Now my grandma Helen was born in 1901 and lived on a remote homestead in Idaho; though I never asked her, I’m sure she was very familiar with plant dyes from her childhood. Indeed, human beings have thousands of years experience working with plant dyes. But by the 1950’s, synthetic aniline dyes became the norm, both in manufacturing and at home. And so that’s what she used.

In reading about these aniline dyes, I was horrified to learn that the dust they create is in fact toxic to the workers who handle them. In addition, who even knows where they come from? The plants are right from our own backyards; for example Rain gathered the horsetail from her garden, and my spouse Glen picked the St. John’s wort flowers from an open field near our house. These dyes are available right in our own neighborhoods.

So what is happening here? We took the plants and put them in a hot water bath, simmering for an hour to extract their pigments. It was fascinating to see how the color almost immediately came out into the water; as the hour progressed, more and more pigment came out. We then put in some natural colored wool and let it simmer for another hour. In some we added vinegar and others salt or pickling alum; these are natural substances which can change the color or pH. It was like being in our own personal chemistry lab. Joanna remarked with deep feeling: “ I wished I had learned chemistry in this way when I was in school.” We could all relate.

Finally when done, we hung the dyed wool out to dry. Here on the improvised clothesline you can see them: a rust-red from St. John’s wort, next to the gray-purple of red cabbage, next to the sage green of the horsetail.

We sat out on Rain’s deck for awhile, admiring our handiwork. And though the thick clouds continued to weep warm rain, somehow the colors we had played with warmed our hearts and spirits. Once again, here’s to the gift of the plants!

Janet

Resources:
• Craft of the Dyer by Karen Leigh Casselman
• The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes by Sasha Duerr
• A Dyer’s Garden by Rita Buchanan
• Susan Monaco: www.mind-body-healing.com/acupuncture
• Rain Delvin: www.healing-roots.net/