After having experimented with various dyes found in Traditional Chinese Medicine over a period of several months, I finally chose a selection that I would use to make paper. For my linen, I chose a ‘primary colours’ pallette of indigo blue (quing dai 青黛), pink/red madder root (qian cao 茜草), and yellow amur cork tree (huang bai 黃柏).
red (madder), yellow (huang bai), blue (indigo) linen
For my cotton denim, I chose a related pallette of blue from denim scraps from a factory in Guangzhou, China, that my friends at Vitamin Creative space posted me, a purple from madder (qian cao 茜草) modified with iron (铁), and a yellow of pomegranate rind (shi liu pi 石榴皮) over-dyed with pagoda tree buds ( Huai Hua Mi 槐花米). I will explain a bit more about the last two.
Iron can be used to modify the colours of dyes. It tends to make colours darker and more somber, and in some cases can even turn the dye black. The process is generally called ‘saddening’. The iron can be added to the dye bath half way through, or an iron bath can be made separately in which you soak the freshly dyed material.
On the left is a sample of denim dyed with madder, on the right is a sample dyed with madder and then saddened with iron
The yellow denim was especially fun to dye. During our time in WuMu, the mother, Yu He, kept feeding us pomegranates from their tree. We would throw the rinds to the little piglets running around the courtyard. However, it turns out that pomegranate rind is a Chinese medicine used for treating diarrhea, worms and haemorrhoids so I guess the piglets had very healthy bottoms. It is also used in dyeing in East Asia, not only because it is a yellow dye in itself but also because it is rich in tannins and therefore helps other more fugitive dyes bind to the cloth. The Pagoda Tree is also known as the Chinese Scholar Tree, and was often planted around Buddhist temples and at the graves of scholars, much like the Yew tree in Britain. It’s name in Chinese characters is 槐, which is composed of 木 (“wood”) and 鬼 (“demon”)… it seems that there is a spirit in this tree. It’s flower buds can be used as an anti-inflammatory and to stem bleeding, but is also a fine yellow dye. Curiously, pomegranate rind and pagoda tree flowers together make a surprisingly strong yellow in comparison to either dye on their own.
Pomegranate rind and Pagoda Tree buds are more than the sum of their parts
medicine-dyed purple and yellow denim
My reasons for choosing cotton denim and linen fabric is that this different fibres will make different papers. My plan was for the linen to be over-beaten to make a translucent paper, while the cotton denim would make an opaque solid paper – and in order for all my beautiful medicine-dyed fabrics to be made into paper they had to be cut to pieces!
all chopped up
Then I had to take my coloured rags all the way up to Glasgow, to the workshop of Alison Newman – Pulp Paperarts Workshop. She is the only person in the UK who offers a workshop where artists can use her facilities and expertise to make their own paper. I wanted to make big sheets of paper and for this I needed another pair of hands, huge vats and molds, and a big press. Above all, however, I needed a hollander beater to turn the rags into pulp in the first place. While the Dongba paper in Yunnan, China, could be made by beating the plant fibres by hand, the European method of paper making from rags requires machinery. In the early days this would have been done by water powered stamping machines, but in the 17th century the Dutch invented the wind-powered ‘Hollander beater’ which was more efficient. These days the Hollander beater has changed little in design except that it is powered by electricity instead of wind.
18th century engraving of a Hollander beater from Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 5 (plates), Diderot & d’Alembert. Paris
my madder-dyed linen being beaten in Alison's Hollander
Making big sheets of paper is a two person job with such large molds.
Alison and I formed sheets of paper from the overbeaten pulp made from the indigo-dyed linen
Large sheets of paper made from the cotton denim dyed with pomegranate rind and pagoda tree flowers on the left, and saddened madder on the right. The piggy in the middle is the odd one out - denim from a jeans factory in Guangzhou
Paper made from over-beaten linen dyed yellow with huang bai, pink with madder roots and blue with indigo from the fermentation vat. The paper is crinkly because it has been air-dried
Translucent paper made from over-beaten linen dyed with madder and indigo.
This paper above is more translucent than the crinkly paper that has been air-dried because it has been dried flat between boards. The yellow huang bai dyed linen is still drying between boards in Alison’s workshop. As you can see the paper is a bit lighter than the original dyed rags, something which I had anticipated. The action of the hollander beater has beaten quite a lot of the dye out, especially the over-beaten linen which spent two days in the hollander, but I think it has a beautiful tone. This paper has been five months in the making and it is almost ready to paint on. I also have some left-over pulp in my freezer ready for making smaller sheets and doing some paper casting. I owe a big thanks to Alison for helping me.
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