cochineal

What I have been up to

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A LOT has happened in the last three months.

First of all I have started my MA in Folkloristics and Applied Heritage Studies at the University of Tartu in Estonia in September, and that has been a demanding but also extremely fulfilling work-out. I love the feel of this place, the city, as well as the program, and the people, and I feel surprizingly comfortable here, even though adjusting to the daily life in a new country is quite energy consuming.

At the end of October – beginning of November I went to DHA42 – Dyes in History and Archaeology conference in Copenhagen and presented there on what we know (and don’t know) about the historic uses of natural dyes on eggs in what is now Ukraine. That whole conference was an amazing experience, from all kinds of angles, and I don’t know whether I will have a chance to write about it, but I do have some notes (and a report I submitted to my program), so who knows, maybe at some point I will find time.

To give a bit more of a visual context for my conference presentation, I made a few eggs, based on the images in late 19th century ethnographic texts, of which there are several, and in my presentation I focused on three of them: one text (sort of an extended article) by Sumtsov, and two egg pattern catalogues (Kulzhynskyy and Korduba) also with significant textual descriptions. I dyed the eggs with the natural dyes mentioned in the texts, or close substitutes where the originally used dyes were not available, and here you see a photo of the egg I made on the background of the page in the contemporary reprint of the old catalogue.

This one was dyed yellow with the apple wood chips with alum, then red in Mexican cochineal with alum (as a replacement of Porphyrophora polonica, an insect dye native to Ukraine and other parts of Europe, which, unfortunately, is not commercially available any more), and then black with sappan wood with iron (again, as a replacement of brazilwood, which was not available for me to buy when I was living in Canada, but now that I am in the EU, I can buy it, and, in fact, it has just arrived from Germany). I also dyed some other eggs red with sappan wood with alum, and some black with logwood with iron.

Now that I have brazilwood, I will try using it for the first time (though not sure when because dyeing is quite a venture in my tiny kitchenette), and see how it works, both with alum and with iron. I am supposing that it should give similar colors as sappan wood, that is, red with alum and black with iron. Technically it might be possible to achieve some other colors or shades with acidity modifiers, but I don’t really need anything I could get from them other than red or black for my current “historical reenactment” purposes. If brazilwood works, I will be one step closer by not having to use the red “replacement” dye, and instead being able to use what is actually listed in the 19th century sources, even though it is (and was) an import dye.

Strangely, madder is not mentioned in any of the Ukrainian historical sources I have seen so far. So unless I can find some evidence of it having been used historically (even if on fibres rather than eggs), locally as a dye (not just in imported fabric dyed somewhere else), I can’t say that it was used, which again reduces my range of potentially local reds.

The only known local source of red then would be Porphyrophora polonica, the status of which is currently unclear. It hasn’t been cultivated (or harvested) in Ukraine for at least a hundred years, possibly longer, and has probably suffered heavily from pesticides, so it appears to be extinct in Ukraine. However, it’s not easy to encounter unless you are looking for it specifically (it lives underground and only comes out once a year), and I’ve heard, it has been spotted somewhere in Poland recently, so there is hope. Of course, from spotting it to feeling free to kill some, is probably a journey of at least a few decades, if everything goes well and they are happily multiplying (and you need to kill a bunch, even though a smaller bunch for egg dyeing than what you would need for fabrics). And then, of course, the technological question of making the dye from the bugs is not exactly an easy one. Something else to explore is potential uses of Porphyrophora polonica in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, maybe Azerbaijan) where it does still occur in nature, but it is not clear whether it is actually used as a dye, rather than being replaced with imported Mexican cochineal.

This particular egg pattern is from Kulzhynskyy’s catalogue (Plate X), it comes from the village Verlok, now in Zhytomyr oblast. The name of the village used to be Vyrlook – sounds like a name of a mythological fantastic creature, about which I knew nothing till I googled. The village used to belong to Kyiv governorate at the end of 19th century, it is about 100km from Bucha, about 80km from Borodyanka, and about 85 km from Mriya on Zhytomyr highway where Russian military killed at least 27 Ukrainians and injured 5 more, most of whom were trying to escape occupation westward between 3 and 25 March 2022. (You can read a report about this, also in English, superbly done by Texty.)

Part of my reason for choosing which eggs to write was in trying to write the eggs from the regions of Ukraine more affected by this war. I also wrote an egg from Kherson region (which I’m not happy with, so I’ll write it again, possibly several times, and then will show it to you). I was looking for the eggs from Chernihiv area, but so far have not identified the ones I wanted to write because all of them in Kulzhynskyy’s catalogue have green, and I am not yet quite happy with the green I have managed to achieve with natural dyes so far. This same reservation applies to a number of eggs from north-east, east, and south of Ukraine.

Another reason I chose this egg was because it is a bit unusual. It is not very common for the flowerpot motif to have this geometric star-flower, rather that some less geometric flowers. It is also not very common for the start-flower to have protruding lines, which make it look less like a flower, and more like a star shaped straw ornament. So for me this egg, while still being quite within tradition, also has its own quirks, its own character, which makes it fun to write.

I am now trying to figure out what exactly I want to do for my MA project, due in roughly a year and a half, in case it remains a project, rather than a thesis. We have two options, writing a “classic” thesis, or making more of a hands-on project accompanied by a paper (much shorter than a thesis would be). I am a bit worried that I will not have enough space to write what I need, in case I opt for a project, however, doing a project would be pushing myself out of my academic comfort zone, and that is probably a good thing. There are some other options I could think of, to sneak in additional text as part of a project, maybe that is what I am going to do, let’s see.

Apple wood chips

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Both Kulzhynsky (1899) and Korduba (1899), when reporting on the use of natural dyes on eggs in what is now Ukraine, talk about wild apple tree bark as the main and most common source of the yellow dye. I have not seen anyone anyone using apple on eggs in the present time, so when I saw that Botanical Colors had some on sale, I just had to buy some and try. These are “wood chips” of apple tree, and I don’t know how similar or different it is from the “wild apple tree bark” reported by the classics, but it’s the closest we have at this point.

I used a simple method – covered the chips with demineralized water, soaked for a while (one or two days), then simmered for a while (probably about half and hour), added a pinch of alum, strained and used. The dye works rather slowly, but gives a very pleasant result, closer to what in the egging community is referred to as “gold”.

Here is the range on tone from the same dye, with a white egg on the left for comparison:

And here are the same eggs with wax removed, bottom left over-dyed with cochineal, bottom middle dipped in iron water, and bottom right with sappan wood:

All eggs are traditional Lithuanian patterns from this book.

I will be dyeing more with apple wood chips!

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.

Kharkiv Collection – 1

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I love the album with the Easter egg collection from the Kharkiv Historical Museum. This collection was started by Sumtsov, and at this point I won’t say anything more about the collection itself, not to draw any unwanted attention. I tried to semi-replicate one of the eggs in this collection, you can see in on the page right under my egg, what I love in particular about this publication is that they have included both the photo of the original egg, and of the contemporary replica side by side.

The dye I used for this egg was made from maiwa cochineal extract with alum. I’m not posting the recipe here because I’m not particularly happy with the outcome. I’ll have to play with the versions of the recipe more, and will post one in the future once I got what I like. Part of the thing I’m not happy about is the amount of grey tone in the color, as opposed to pure or brighter pink or wine color. I know it’s possible to achieve shades more in tune with the color of some of the original eggs in this album from cochineal, because I did happen to succeed in past :). If I do this egg again, I would also make the segments of the egg less elongated at the base of the plant motif, and possibly the tip of the plant more round.

We don’t know where exactly was this egg is from, it is possible that someone at the museum (or someone else more knowledgeable than me) would be able to either provide more info, or to theorize about it, or to make an educated guess. Some texts that accompany the images in the album suggest that the specific information on the geographic origins of the eggs has been lost, though they do provide the more general account of places whether the eggs in the collection could be coming from. However, there are quite a few of these pink-purplish color eggs in this particular collection, and I haven’t really seen this color combination in such a large number in other traditional collections. Something to be explored.

Extracts: Coreopsis, Cochineal, Logwood

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After a long pause, I’m restarting experiments with natural dyes on eggs. Gratitude for a push to start now instead of waiting longer goes to two different initiatives, the first one being “Pysanky for Ukraine” – an amazing group of egg artists have been getting together every year on April 1st to write some pysanky. These are the eggs I have managed to start while being online with other 100+ eggers. The second occasion for restarting the eggs is the fundraiser Natural Dyers & Printers for Ukraine in which I have been invited to do a Q&A on egg batik. Since I will be answering questions, and will probably need to record a bit of a demo in advance, I might as well get my hands dirty :). Jokes aside, I am extremely grateful and humbled by the wonderful people and the amount of their love of the art(s), knowledge, experience, hard work, and the resulting expertise.

In these eggs, the left drop-pull is dyed with cochineal extract with alum, the right one with logwood extract with alum, and in the middle non-drop-pool egg, the first yellow layer is coreopsis extract with alum, then a quick vinegar etch back to white, then cochineal with alum for those light purple/lilac spots and the final background is the same cochineal with a dip into iron water.

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 year’s eggs

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Here are some eggs that I made last year but didn’t get to post on the blog. As usual, natural dye experiments.

Smaller egg – duck, yellow-marigold, brown – dried elderberry (not particularly reliable, seems like). Bigger egg – goose, yellow– marigold, orange – madder, brown – dried elderberry.

Yellow – weld, olive green – malva, blue – cabbage, pink – old madder+cochineal after vinegar. Smallest egg is chicken, then duck, the goose.17546764_10155099642727660_3361046898600688573_o

Weld (yellow), cabbage (blue, green, teal), duck eggs.17349598_10155028475437660_8850810793684496621_o

Weld (yellow), cabbage (green/olive), and madder/cochineal (orange), duck eggs17239776_10155028478162660_7696951738701663448_o.jpg

Big eggs, natural dyes

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Here is my first experiment using natural dyes on ostrich and emu eggs. I made one of each, first etched them in vinegar, then used the same two dyes – my favorite coreopsis for yellow (turned out sort of green on emu egg) and madder+cochineal for red (brownish on emu).

Here’s the ostrich:

610_8234Photo courtesy of Mykola Swarnyk

The dots are specific to ostrich egg shells. The shell itself is very smooth, similar to rhea, and the wax tends to peel of sometimes – not sure yet what to do with that, perhaps making sure that the egg itself is on the warm side and the wax is well heated would help.

Here is emu:610_8326Photo courtesy of Mykola Swarnyk

It was etched again after the red dye.

In general, I would say, the experiment was interesting. It takes a lot of dye though, and unless one is doing a good number of big eggs at the same time, the amount of the dyes seems rather wasteful, it’s not clear what to do with them afterward – I put mine in a fridge and used some for the eggs in the previous post, but they did not work quite as well as the fresh ones would be expected to work.

For now I only have one or two emus left, and no other big eggs (have plenty of duck and goose instead), so probably will not be dyeing the big ones any time soon. It would be interesting to use dye on rhea egg – the color of its own shell should give nice tones.

Last eggs of the summer

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I had a thick pen and some dyes left over from making big eggs (which I will show you later), so I made a few simple eggs. I love using the thick pen even on small eggs.

The dyes did not cooperate so well, especially the red one, not sure why, they might have not liked going in and out of the fridge. The eggs also did not provide a very even coloring surface. Maybe because I wiped some pencil lines with vinegar? To be further explored.

Yellow is coreopsis as usual and red (or rather orange) is madder with cochineal. Duck eggs.

First experiments with natural dyes complete.

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Here is the result:

You already saw the previous post with yellow coreopsis dye. I must say this was my favourite dye, and I was extremely lucky to have started with it, because I have struggled quite a bit with the next dyes. Coreopsis give a good intense yellow with relatively little dye, without cooking (just boiling water), it dyes quite fast and works well for a long time. While the red dyes have spoiled by now, this one seems fine still, and smells as beautifully now, as it did in the beginning, in spite of having been sitting in a jar in a hot room. I love this dye and will definitely keep using it.

Now, one by one.

1. coreopsis – yellow, madder standard and cochineal – red (50-50 mixture, twice).

I would have probably dyed it for the third time, the plan was to leave it in the dye over night one more time (it had already a session of few hours and then once overnight), because it still had some patches not fully dyed to my liking, but when I came from the week-end of being away, the dye has spoiled, so I’ll have to try a new batch of red dye eventually. I have really struggled with both madder and cochineal, I was not getting the intensity of color that I was expecting based on other people’s reports (and probably based on my amazing experience with coreopsis), I have used up the small container of madder standard in the process. I still have a container of madder rich, but that has turned from powder into a piece of rock, so I’ve let it be for now. I am tempted to just buy some regular madder in a herb store – it comes both in the root form and in powder, and see whether it works better that this fancy dye powder. We’ll see.

2. red cabbage – teal, vinegar – white.

Red cabbage was a nice experiment, because that is something that is easily available in a grocery store. I did add a mordant, and changed the pH balance to have a blue tone instead of purple. It smells like cabbage, is rather weak when dyeing, and takes a while, but still it works, and let’s see how the color withstands time and light. Maybe I’ll show later in a separate post and in detail, how I made that dye, especially if I manage to get another egg or two dyed in it.

3. coreopsis – yellow, black walnut – brown. Goose egg.

Black walnut worked sort of OK, but took a while to dye. It’s good as foundation (or over-dye) for other colours to make them darker. Perhaps I should have dyed this one two or three times. The dye powder is coarser than others, and I have more of it, so I will likely play with it a bit more, to see whether I can get the color more intense or have it dye faster. The egg pattern is not traditional, it is from a memorized and partially improvised version of a trypillya-style egg I have seen before. Not sure who is the author of this pattern, if I knew I would say.

4. black walnut – brown, vinegar – white.

I did an experiment here, because this was an etched egg and I did not want to mess up the while background by taking the wax off with the candle, I did half of it with hot water and half with hot oil. Turned out, walnut did not like one of those procedures (neither, by the way, did the etched cabbage egg above), guess which was the procedure not liked by walnut and cabbage? You can see that the dye on the right (or bottom) half of the egg has partially washed away. Didn’t like the water, liked oil just fine. You’ll see later that lac did not like oil. But maybe would not have liked water even more, who knows…

5. coreopsis – yellow, red cabbage – pale green, lac and then black walnut – brown.

This is the egg from the previous post.

So the red cabbage gave this pale green instead of teal-blue after coreopsis. I fell in love with this pattern earlier this year, so here is a comparison, the same pattern dyed with chemical dyes, with natural dyes and without dyes – etching with vinegar on the brown egg.

6. coreopsis – yellow, madder and cochineal – red, lac – burgundy, vinegar – white.

In the photo below you can see that lac was not happy at all and came off with the wax. Not sure whether it did not like the hot oil, which I used to take it off, or maybe it was just generally unhappy. It did not behave like this in the egg above when I used black walnut over lac, maybe this is what I should have done here. But, in general, lac stinks (worse than cabbage), it takes a long time to dye, the color is not particularly nice, and as we can see, does not stay so well. And it spoiled also within the same timeframe as madder+cochineal. I still have some left, so I might do more research to see whether I can add something to the dye to make it more happy (chalk? cream of tartar? something else?) and play more with it, but probably not any time soon. I will probably try out other versions of similar colours that I have not tried yet before coming back to this one.

See, this is lac by itself, the first try on plain egg – I should have known still from this first run, that is does not stick all that well to egg, the dye came off just by me wiping the egg dry.

So, that’s it for now. Ask questions if you have any.

All the dyes I have used here besides red cabbage are Maiwa extracts in powder form.