orange

Brazil wood, first attempt

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Since I now live in EU, I could finally order brazil wood dye chips from Kremer (Germany), I guess they only have a license to sell it within EU, last year when I tried to order it to ship to Canada, they wouldn’t. So now I have it.

Why is it so important? Well, brazil wood is the only natural red dye of the ones mentioned in all of the late 19th century ethnographic sources (about the eggs) that is currently commercially available (though the availability is limited). The other red dye source mentioned is the local Porphyrophora polonica, the so-called “Polish cochineal,” or less misleadingly “Polish carmine scale insect,” or colloquially “St.John’s blood”. In Ukrainian (and similarly in several other Slavic languages) the name of the insect is chervets’ (червець), and it is related to both, the names for the color red (and sometimes the name for beautiful things), and the name of the month of June, when the insects would be harvested for the dye. But more about that on some other occasion. I could not locate a place in the world where this dye source could be purchased, and it is not clear whether it is currently used for dyeing anywhere, rather than being replaced by the Mexican cochineal.

So, the brazilwood. I have used its “older” cousin sappan wood (sometimes referred to as Eastern brazilwood), and maybe I’ll write more about it on some other occasion (in fact I might have written about it a while before), so I went for a very simple recipe more or less analogous to the proportions of chips to water I would have used with sappan wood, though it’s not very easy to properly estimate, since this brazilwood is very finely chopped, almost to the powder, so I would assume it should release more dye than the thicker chips. This is what I ended up using:

50g brazilwood, 500 ml water. Soaked overnight. Simmered for 15 min, added alum.

And this is what I got, left on white egg, right over the yellow (apple wood chips).

This is not the intensity of color I’m looking for, but the tone is right. I think I just have to make the dye bath 3-4 times more concentrated, and potentially explore some other things to add (like hardening the water). So, experiments to be continued.

Both eggs are from Kulzhynkyy’s catalogue, the left one is “the barrel with a man” XIV-15, Nemyriv area, Podillya , the right one is “swallow tails” XII-9, village Blahodatna, used to be Kherson governorate, currently between Mykolayiv and Kherson. I’m torn to whether finish them with these colors or to make a stronger brazilwood dye and dip them again. The right one is pretty much done, just need to remove the wax. The left one was still supposed to have the black background over the red, I might continue as is with brazilwood with iron and see what I get. Maybe this would be a good sample, though not properly colored.

LAST WEEKS’ LITHUANIAN EGGS

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It’s been rather difficult for me to find inspiration for eggs, with war and all that looming the background, so I’m glad that “Pysanky Toronto 2023” that’s starting in a few days has forced me to make some for the Lithuanian eggs workshop I’m teaching there.

All of these are attempts to copy traditional Lithuanian patterns, for some of them there are several takes of the same pattern. 

There were three yellow dyes: apple wood chips (that I’ve never tried before, but that seems to be one the the most traditional yellow dyes in Ukraine), dyer’s chamomile, and some of our home grown last year’s coreopsis. Of the reds there was an old cochineal extract dye, which I’m surprised still worked, and I cannot remember when I made it, must have been for the natural dyes for Ukraine fundraiser last year. The second red dye was sappan wood which this time didn’t cooperate too well neither in the wood chips, nor in the extract form. All dyes were with alum, and the two greenish eggs were dipped into iron water after the yellow dye.

I will probably make another post or a couple eventually, showcasing at least the apple chips, but maybe other dyes individually as well.

I’m starting a new page in my egg adventures in September, so there will most likely be more frequent posts, in fact, I will probably add a personal blog page somewhere here to document my other-than-egg explorations and experiences.

Dried Cochineal (whole bugs)

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About a month ago we went to a local art shop which is the home base of the amazing water-colour paints (https://stonegroundpaint.com), and as we got talking about colors, paints and dyes, the owner, Eric, brought out a container of dried cochineal and gave me some to take home. So yesterday I finally got to it and cooked up some dye with alum and cream or tartar (as suggested by some fabric dyeing recipes). The pink you see on these eggs is that cochineal dye.

The other coral-like reddish orange is coreopsis extract with alum on top of the fist cochineal. The brown is the same cochineal-coreopsis sequence finished with a dip in iron water.

I will have to play more with the next batches of the dye (I only used about a teaspoon of bugs, which I then ground not very finely), I will likely use more bugs next time (to make the color more concentrated), I’ll grind them better, and will start with no mordants, and add cautiously.

For the first experiment with the whole bugs, I think this is not bad. I have tried cochineal extract before but didn’t have a lot of it, so I used it in combination with madder.

The next few months I will be experimenting more with cochineal, both the whole bugs and the extract. My parents gave me for Christmas a gift certificate to the Maiwa online store, so I’ll order some cochineal from them.

Last two weeks

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Made some more eggs, some were attempts to copy Lithuanian drop-pull eggs, while others were inspired by Lithuanian patterns. A number of dyes – two of coreopsis (extract and fresh), elderflower (dried), sappan wood, madder, saskatoon berries (frozen), I think that’s it though I might have forgotten something. Mainly with alum, one egg had sappan wood with iron on background.

The shades of coreopsis

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We have some tickseed coreopsis hybrid, the non-tinctoria variety, and so I had a chance to continue my coreopsis experiments from last year. I used some semi-fresh mainly wilted flowers and cooked them up in a usual way, then added alum. It gives colors that are very similar to the fresh flower of the tinctoria variety which I grew and then cooked up last summer. The shades are different from the coreopsis dye extract. While the extract gives what I would call a true gold, the dye from fresh flowers gives at the beginning a proper dark orange, almost pumpkin, and after a short time wears out and begins to give a pastel orange, a bit cold, towards coral.

In the photo left to right: coreopsis extract, then first egg from coreopsis fresh flowers, then third or maybe fourth egg in the day from fresh flowers that’s a few days old.

And the season is over for now…

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All of these colors were achieved with the combinations of saskatoon berries (blue), sappan wood (red, pink), buckthorn (yellow), buckthorn with iron (brown), gardenia (yellow/gold), coreopsis (gold), elderflower (yellow) (except emu where no dyes were used), plus the natural variations of eggshell color and vinegar for etching.

I’m becoming more comfortable with drop-pull technique, seeing more possibilities. While most of these eggs are trying to be strictly traditional as much as possible (mostly Ukrainian, some Lithuanian), a few patterns have just appeared out of nowhere, non-traditional (though not necessarily anti-traditional) which is nice. To write “my own” design is something that almost never happened to me in the other more common technique, so to have it happen in drop-pull after a relatively short time is rather surprising and even inspiring. 🙂

I’m getting ready to put away the dyes and tools for now, but there might be some more posts of close-up shots, and who knows when the next time will be…

Manjistha (Indian madder)

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I was going to try some new dyestuffs, so I tried this Indian madder, manjistha (Rubia cordifolia). I had dry roots bought from a herb store, used a usual recipe for madder-like things: soaked for a while (about a day), added some calcium, then simmered for a few hours, then left for a while still, then strained, added alum and tried dyeing. After a few long (multiple hour) dyeing sessions, in-between which I let the egg dry out, here is what I got. It’s a bit more orange that a brown egg would be. It took very slowly, and the shade it not very deep.

It’s possible that I messed up something with the recipe, perhaps I should have chopped the roots up to make them finer (I’ve seen that recommendation somewhere). Manjistha is supposed to be less afraid of heat than regular madder (the main dyeing component, manjisthin, is present in madder too, but in a much smaller proportion), so I don’t thing that I overheated it. I used distilled water this time, who knows, maybe manjistha doesn’t like that. I din’t like the smell very much from the beginning, and after a few days the dye has started fermenting, so I ditched it. I dryed out the used roots and kept them in case I want to use them again – this is recommended with roots in general. Still have half of the original amount of unused roots, but probably won’t try it again any time soon – too much effort for a result that is too weak.

Here is what this egg looks like after writing (second dark red dye – sappan wood, and then vinegar etch):

Anyway, one more thing was tried.