The full title is actually Indigo - Egyptian Mummies to Blue Jeans which might give you some indication of the scope and breadth of Jenny Balfour-Paul's 250-page scholarly book on a subject I didn't even know I was that interested in until I went to hear her talk recently.
Good old Launceston for organising the Charles Causley Festival year on year; a weekend of literary and arts events in a Cornish town that it could be argued is not that well known for its cultural calender. Poet Charles Causley was born and bred in the town and taught at the school there for many years.
Someone will send me an 'Outraged of Launceston' e mail now, and though I do keep an eye out maybe I miss a lot. And the town lost its only independent bookshop a while back so is now reliant on W.H.Smith's and a second-hand bookseller.
Anyway, in this new commitment-free summer that I am enjoying, I now have time to pay attention and go to these things for pleasure, and, because the Charles Causley Festival organisers have priced everything very sensibly, off I trotted to Jenny Balfour-Paul's two hour event, which included a very nice lunch, for a mere £7.
I felt the indigo love the minute I walked in the room feeling slightly out of place in teal. People sporting their creations and Jenny (can we revert to first name terms now) wearing a wonderful selection of beautifully dyed fabrics. Colour-wise I have always been a bit indigo-smitten and it only took about ten seconds for me to want to know everything.
What do I need to grow...
How do you make a dye vat...
In fact Jenny's talk was about her new book Deeper Than Indigo - Tracing Thomas Machell, forgotten explorer
'This intriguing odyssey, set on the edges of time, encompasses biography, memoir, detective story, travelogue and history to tell a remarkable tale of East-West connections and a mysterious love.'
It was fascinating and I will seek that out next, but first I needed to find out about indigo itself and so bought Indigo - Egyptian Mummies to Blue Jeans, also for sale on the day, fully referenced, a definitive work published by The British Museum. I have been steeped (sorry) in it ever since and am now so indigo-aware that I have had to sort out my Mood Indigo workroom noticeboard accordingly...
In use by the third millenium BC, it is thought the properties of Isatoris tinctoria (woad) were known to the Egyptians, with traces found on the wrappings of mummies, as well as to the Pazyrak culture living in Siberia. A rug discovered in 1949 and preserved by burial in ice in the Altai Mountains since 3-4 BC has proved to be the earliest example of pile-weaving.
There, now I didn't know any of that and though I can get very bogged down in pre-medieval historical detail thankfully Jenny makes this academic work an absolutely fascinating read. Fast forward to medieval England; Edward III is encouraging Flemish dyers, fullers and weavers to come to England where woad is second to wine in importance and by the 1580s rivalling grain as the country's main crop.
Fast forward to 2015 and the only place I can definitely tell you you will find woad growing is down in the corner of our garden by Bookhound's woodshed..
and probably in a zillion other indigo-dyers' gardens. The UK's last remaining commercial crop was processed in the Lincolnshire Fens in 1932.
And finally I have sorted out the mystery of the whole indigo thing, because vague and misunderstood it was in my mind, and now I discover that the woad leaves must be picked in the plant's first year, not when it is five feet tall in its second year and flowering. And another thing, that soil will now be starved of nitrogen as a result.
I was making polite conversation with the woman sitting next to me and found all this out...
'Have you ever tried indigo dyeing,' I asked.
'I am an indigo dyer,' she replied.
Honestly, the things I've learned...
Woad is the plant that will grow in Europe but it is not the only indigo-producer...
Indigofera tinctoria grows in India, Africa and Central America...
Polygonum tinctorium in Japan...
Marsdenia tinctoria 'tarumaker' in Asia...
...and various other plants in various other places, all capable of producing indigo dye but it's the extraction that seems very complex. The process a series of closely guarded secrets for centuries and imbued with a sense of mystery, intrigue, superstition, tradition and ceremony around the world. You have to wonder how on earth anyone discovered that by adding urine to woad, heating it at 50 degrees, whisking it for ten minutes, removing the oxygen by adding something else (maybe not all in that exact order) and then adding your fabric which would emerge yellow before magically turning blue as it met with the oxygen in the air.
It must have seemed like alchemy of the best and most exciting variety mustn't it.
The dye itself doesn't need a mordant (fixative) coating the fibres as it does rather than infiltrating them. Indigo will fade but it will remain unchanged and is apparently the only dye to do so. Look at old tapestries and the blue may be faded but it will be true (the Bayeux Tapestry a good example) and of course it is that supposed weakness, the fading, that became indigo's salvation in the shape of denim jeans. Though synthetic dye substitutes are now used at an industrial level, as I understand it, the chemical formula and dyeing process remains the same for the billion pairs of jeans produced annually.
Remember the days when you had to do your own wearing in.
Sitting in a bath full of water to shrink the things to fit.
Boiling them up to fade them and soften them.
The Levi's that could stand up on their own.
I'll bet you could all tell some stories...
Inevitably a book like this opens countless trails handsomely repaying the investment of money and time (two weeks of wonderful and engrossing reading) and I have now ventured along several of them...
Sashiko, the Japanese quilting patterns on indigo fabric (I'm on the case)
Shibori, the Japanese indigo tie-dyeing process (books reserved from library)
And then there is the African woman who had a stall of indigo fabrics in Tavistock Market a few weeks ago...before I had felt the love, so I walked past and barely noticed them, and she hasn't been back since. I am kicking myself.
But best of all perhaps, the Kayaker saw the book on the kitchen table, saw a picture of Sapa in Vietnam and asked...
'Where's the sash?'
'What sash?'
'The one I bought back for Ganga (the Tinker) from Vietnam... it's indigo, hand-dyed.'
I had a momentary panic because after all there has been a massive sort-out in Tinker's Cott, but the sash was safe...
And it transpired that someone had told the Kayaker to travel to Sapa, the heart of Vietnam's indigo dyeing industry, while he was there and so he had.
Pictures to follow...I was almost crying with delight.
Our very own bit of real indigo.
So there you have it. Well a bit of it. There is much much more to Jenny Balfour-Paul's book than I have mentioned here, not least the fact that indigo 'was tainted by the associated evil of human exploitation' and slavery; a labour-intensive main crop alongside sugar, coffee and cotton. If you are interested in the by-history of a product or just love the colour and fancy some good 'Did You Know' moments, this is the book for you.
Meanwhile, has anyone tried indigo dyeing...It took William Morris eight years to master the indigo dyeing process required to print his fabrics so I'm not rushing it.
Should I grow some Polygonum tinctoris...
Is Sashiko quilting as relaxing as it looks (too late have already bought the book and sent for supplies)
Or what about Shibori...
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