January 15, 2018
ASIA / PACIFIC
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 5
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BEAUTIFUL BLUES. Dye from the indigo plant has been used for centuries all over the world. It’s the
familiar blue of blue jeans, and in a class at the Wanariya workshop in Tokyo, the technique was also familiar:
A simple version of the craft called shibori. In the photo, a person kneads cloth in indigo dye at a Wanariya
indigo dye workshop in Tokyo. (Linda Lombardi via AP)
Beginners take heart: Indigo
dyeing makes everyone look good
By Linda Lombardi
The Associated Press
hen the outcome of a craft
project is a surprise, it’s often
not a good surprise. My recent
experience trying indigo dyeing in Tokyo
was an exception to that rule.
Dye from the indigo plant has been used
for centuries all over the world. It’s the
familiar blue of blue jeans, and in a class at
the Wanariya workshop in Tokyo, the
technique we used was also familiar: A
simple version of the craft called shibori, it
reminded me of tie-dyeing in school art
classes long ago.
Using some scraps as examples, the
teacher first explained how to wrap the
fabric around marbles with rubber bands,
or twist bits of it up with rubber bands,
depending on the pattern we wanted. He
also showed us a couple of folding
techniques, but to me these screamed “not
for beginners,” so I stuck with the rubber
bands and marbles.
We were each given a lovely indigo-dyed
apron to cover our clothes, and two pairs of
rubber gloves to wear on top of each other.
The reason for the latter was obvious: The
instructor’s blue-stained fingers looked
like they probably never come completely
clean.
He warned us that the vat of dye would
smell strong. It wasn’t pleasant, but not
awful either. Just as striking was the look
of it — this wasn’t just a tub of colored
liquid. The surface was covered with froth,
with a big bubble in the middle that he said
was called “the flower of indigo.”
The instructor soaked my piece of fabric
in plain water first so it would take up the
dye better. Then he told me to dunk it in
the vat and knead it “for as long as I say.”
That’s where the process gets
complicated. After kneading, you lift the
item out of the dye and hold it in the air for
a few moments, while the color changes
from a sort of dull brown to blue, as
oxidation takes place. Then you dunk and
knead it again — and possibly again. The
duration and number of dips is how dyers
get so many shades of blue — traditionally
there are 48 — from the same pot of dye.
Rinsing was left to a small washing
machine. When the other two people in the
class unwrapped their items, all three of us
gasped at how beautiful they were. I
assumed they had some talent that I
lacked, but when I unwrapped mine, we all
exclaimed the same way.
No doubt to a real artisan, the results
looked like they’d been made by children,
but I’ve never done a craft where the first
attempt was so surprising and satisfying.
Indigo dyeing is complex and unlike
other natural dyes. It’s not easy to get
W
indigo to dye fabric, which is why it’s good
for tie-dying: A rubber band is enough to
stop it.
Most dyes are soluble in water, but not
indigo, says Catharine Ellis, textile artist
and co-author of a forthcoming book on
natural dyes. “Even if it’s a fine powder,
you stir it up and you just have fine parti-
cles in the water,” she says. To make the
indigo soluble takes “magic and chemis-
try.”
The Japanese method involves com-
posting the indigo leaves. Then, creating
and tending the dye vat sounds something
like caring for a sourdough starter. There’s
talk about “feeding” and keeping it
“healthy,” like it’s a living thing.
Indigo needs an alkaline environment,
which is achieved by using substances like
wood ash lye. Then, natural materials are
added: Ellis may use sugar or henna; the
Japanese use plant material or saké.
“What happens is what’s called a
reduction,” Ellis says. “During the
fermentation and reduction, the oxygen
molecule that is bound to the indigo very
strongly become less strongly bound, so
the indigo can become soluble in water.”
As the natural materials break down,
conditions become more acidic, so you have
to keep “feeding” the vat.
“All that froth on the top, you learn how
to read it — the size of the bubble, the color
of the bubbles,” Ellis says. “You take the
pH, you do dye tests with it, you just have
to observe.”
Indigo and cotton have a special
relationship, sticking to each other “like no
other dyes and fibers,” says Teresa Duryea
Wong, author of Cotton and Indigo from
Japan (Schiffer, 2017).
Most people think of silk when they
think of Japanese textiles. But Wong says
cotton holds a special place as well.
“Raising cotton in Japan started about
600 years ago and it changed everything,”
she says. Back then, when the nobility
controlled all aspects of everyday life,
peasants could grow cotton on the edges of
their fields and experiment with it, since it
was unregulated.
Indigo-dyed cotton was first used for
farmers’ clothes as well as fishermen and
firemen’s jackets. Gradually it became
more decorative, eventually growing into
an art form.
There is a synthetic version of indigo. It
still has to go through the reduction
process since it’s chemically identical to
the real thing, but it’s less expensive, so
the natural dye has become much less
common.
“In Japan, there were about 40,000 acres
of farms growing indigo at the beginning of
the 1900s, and making the indigo dye-
Continued on page 9
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