YamazakiĮach day we explored a different red dye on silk yarns and fabrics: Sappanwood (Caesalpinia sappan), Madder (Rubia Cordifolia), Lac ( Laccifer lacca), Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius), and Purple Root/Gromwell (Lithospermum purpurocaeruleum). He is a well-respected practitioner, author and teacher. Yamasaki is a 3rd generation natural dyer and his family has specialized in the traditional dye processes, which they have meticulously researched from the Japanese Heian Dynasty (about a thousand years ago). I also participated in a natural dye workshop with Japanese dye master, Dr. I just returned from several weeks in China, where I did an artist residency at the Jinze Art Center near Shanghai. The residency was focused on weaving and the study of Chinese local “tubu” cloth from the 1950’s and 60’s. Wada Gromwell on silk with extraction by kneading and camellia ash mordant Did he mention that in his studio, he kneads the roots a few times in the morning and some more in the afternoon to get maximum colorants from the plants? And he repeats dyeing, middle mordanting, and dyeing, many times in a few days to get saturated deep purple? He did say the purple dye extracted in this way has much more complexity and depth than the easy extraction with alcohol. On the contrary, we achieved the most beautiful purple even with limited time we had to process it all. He thought after making the students knead the soaked roots for 2 hours on their knees on the floor, only grey pale purple is achieved. Yamazaki uses in Japan that it gave him such worries during the class. The wild purple roots were so strange looking compared to the ones imported from China that Dr. From the poem, the guarded field may have hosted wild gromwell plants like the Super Gromwell Roots that Edith found in Hong Kong where herbalist told her “only the very best is found in Hong Kong.” Purple Gromwell roots (Arnebiae radix) Murasaki is purple and the plant was a precious medicinal herbs. And it starts with madder (akane) as a pillow word but scene is the gromewll field (known to belong to Tenchi Emperor). Gromwell on silkĬatharine: At the bottom is the love poem by Princess Nukata I told you about. The collection contains poems ranging from AD 347 (poems #85–89) through 759 (#4516), the bulk of them representing the period after AD 600. The anthology of poems Man’yōshū 万葉集 literally means “Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves” contains many poems associating with purple colors (murasaki) and gromwell roots (shikon) and madder as well as camellia ash. Those plants have been used as mordants in Southeast Asia, northern Europe, and Mexico respectively. Camellia is a plant which is called bio-accumulator of aluminum similar to symplocos, lycopodium and miconia. RE: Camellia ash (椿灰汁) since the Asuka Period (538 to 710 ) and Nara Period (AD 710 to 794) documents recorded that the Japanese dyers used the liquid strained from the camellia ash as a vehicle to shift pH and at the same time to access its alum as a mordant. Yoshiko Wada and Edith Cheung in Jinze Town. The Jinze Art Centre in Shanghai and Slow Fiber Studios in Berkely, CA organized the workshops with Japanese masters working with my colleague Edith Cheung who is in charge of the textile program there. Yamazaki I am jumping in for some additional thoughts and information. Since the person in charge of our blog is on vacation until the end January and I was g Japanese to English translator for Dr. Wada from and, where we re-blog Catharine’s blog in our Dye Nerds’ Blog. “This is a friend of Catharine’s, Yoshiko I. She was a very important part of this experience and I thought her words, with additional insight, deserved their own spot and thus the following: Wada wrote the follow comment in response to the latest blog post.
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