Workshop natural dyeing – June 2025
Dorothée Catry – Maeva Lardin
Plant dyeing
Nature, and more specifically the plants that surround us, offer an immense wealth: natural color.
Plants, minerals and animals can be sources of color through the dyes they contain, and the exploitation of their coloring power has been discovered and used since Neolithic times. Dyeing techniques have evolved over
centuries in line with the development of knowledge, the discovery of new resources, world trade, the different fibers available and industrialization, until they were superseded by synthetic colors.
At the end of the 19th century, the dye molecules present in plant, mineral and animal resources were synthesized using petrochemical hydrocarbons. As a result, the textile industry switched from natural to synthetic dyes. Today, the majority of textiles are dyed synthetically, and the
textile industry is the second most polluting industry in the world.
Experimenting with plant dyes allows us to rediscover an ancestral technique, to question our current
textile dyeing methods and our environment, our relationship with plants and our knowledge of them, but also
to take a new look at color and plants.
There are different families of dyes in plants, which determine the color of the dye.
