Eco-Printing Banners with Wild Hues
All photos courtesy of the artist
To kick off COP26 we invited textile artist and natural dye specialist India Wills, aka Wild Hues, into the Print Clan studio to create some ‘eco prints’ using our equipment. During COP26 we wanted to showcase the work of a local artist who is using the most sustainable approaches in their practice, and having followed India’s work for a while she seemed like a perfect collaborator.
India set up Wild Hues in October 2020 to pursue her passion for naturally dyed textiles, and has developed a practice using traditional hand dyeing methods and resist techniques to create bold and colourful contemporary textile pieces and homewares. All of her pieces are made by hand in small batches using natural and ethically sourced dyes and cloth. She strives to work in harmony with nature, often using food waste and foraged plants to create work which reflects the local environment and season.
India came into Print Clan and created banners using leaves foraged around Glasgow, which are a celebration of the beautiful alchemy of our urban plant life. The four darker pieces are created from hand-loomed silk cloth which is pre-treated with a natural ‘mordant’ which assists in fixing the dye, and then tightly bundled with the leaves, which transfer their colour onto the cloth when steamed. In some instances, a background colour has been used, which is created using a piece of cotton soaked in a concentrated natural dye laid over the leaves, and transfers a colour during steaming. These dye soaked pieces of cotton also take on a pattern, and are the lighter coloured pieces which appear as a ghostly mirror image of the silk piece.
Using locally foraged leaves means that each of these pieces are a reflection of the local environment and season. Yellows are created from flavonoids (anti-oxidants), and browns come from tannins, which shift to greens and dark blues when an rust solution is added. Background colours come from madder root (red) which has been used for over 3 millennia and was once processed in huge factories in Glasgow, and from Cochineal and Lac which are pink and red dyes extracted from small parasitic insects. Every colour tells a story, and every dye material has its own fascinating history and unique set of botanical properties.
You can see the banners on display in the Print Clan studio for the duration of COP at our usual opening times. Thanks to India for what we hope is the first of many collaborations.
