Go, See, Share Trip: Part 1
Thanks to Creative Scotland’s Go, See, Share fund, myself Laura Spring, artist Laura Aldridge and anthropologist/designer Charlotte Linton, all of whom are involved in the Sculpture House Dye Garden in a variety of ways, were able to undertake an invaluable research trip at the start of August to two very different but successful dye gardens currently operating within the UK.The aim of this trip was to conduct some in-depth research that builds on the pilot year of the Sculpture House Dye Garden to allow us to consider how the dye garden can evolve and become self-sustaining, as well as sharing the knowledge we learnt from our trip within our community in Scotland. The appetite for more sustainable and considered approaches to both textiles and business practices is increasing and we felt it was important to engage in discourse with practitioners in other parts of the country.The intention of this post is to share insights into our trip with a fuller, more extensive offering available at a talk we are organising at our dye garden home in Sculpture House towards the end of this month (more details on that event to follow further down this post)…
Rows of Indigo growing in the glasshouses at Bailiwick Blue on Guernsey
Our first stop on our trip was to the beautiful island of Guernsey, home to Bailiwick Blue, a natural dye growing business with a focus on the production of indigo to create both seeds and pigment for sale, underpinned by an emphasis on sustainable business practice. Although Bailiwick Blue grows a variety of other dye plants and flowers, the big passion for them is indigo. George, the lead on the business, has spent years working with indigo and has an incredible history and knowledge of growing dye plants, extracting pigment, harvesting seed and using the results in her textile projects. Based in five glasshouses on the island, which have been their home since 2017, Bailiwick Blue have for the first time this year started to grow indigo outside as well as under the cover and safety that their glasshouse’s provide. Although we have grown small quantities of indigo outside at Sculpture House in the past two growing seasons, obviously the climate in Guernsey is very different to here in Scotland. Yet it is clear from our trip that in order to increase consistency in our growing and educational offerings, a polytunnel or indoor growing space is a logical next step in developing our plans.
"Senbon" Persicaria Tinctoria Pink Long leaf indigo growing in the glasshouses at Bailiwick Blue
But, back to Bailiwick Blue…they have a focus, a passion and two complementary personalities working on the business. Indigo can be gained from a variety of plants but Bailiwick Blue focuses on growing Japanese indigo known as tadai ai. It requires a long and complicated process to extract the colour from the green leaves that we see, to the beautiful rich blue we know it can produce. There is a complex science lesson behind this and as a newcomer to this world of natural dyes I would point you in the direction of a few passionate people if learning more about indigo extraction is something you want to know more about. Bailiwick Blue is an obvious place to start, but here in Scotland Elisabeth Culshaw hosts classes about extracting indigo from her Glasgow based studio, and is the person behind the Indigo Plot at the Botanics in the west end. Jenny Dean is an inspiring and deeply informative expert with brilliant books on natural dyes and runs classes at Ditchling Museum in East Sussex, and Michel Garcia is a world renowned botanist, chemist and natural dye expert who knows a lot about the world of indigo and who is based in France. Between them you can immerse and learn so much about this special group of plants.
Laura Aldridge and myself harvesting some indigo to dye with
The glasshouses at Bailiwick Blue are big. I wasn’t sure what to expect before we went, but it was inspiring to see how much space they have and what they are doing with just a few hands involved. Focusing on one dye plant, albeit in three different varieties of tadai ai (they grow Maruba, Senbon & Kojōuko), seems to make sense when it comes to indigo. The processing of the leaves is done off-site, an important consideration as this plant requires a lot of space if it is to be grown at scale.
Scaling up production seems to have happened gradually over the seven years they have been working on this project and despite this having a clear commercial output, as George says ‘it’s about a movement’.
As part of our trip, George kindly organised for us to visit another business on the island called The Soil Farm who practice regenerative agriculture to grow local fruits and vegetables for the island community. Although not textile based, it’s a business whose practice is rooted in values shared by George and they are passionate about the very important matter of how to create healthy soil, something which cannot be overlooked when considering how to grow dye plants.We learned how one of the projects they are working with just now, is how to turn the nutrient depleted compost the council has been producing from the island's green waste into something that would really be beneficial to put on your land. When living on an island as small as Guernsey the impact of all decisions seems to be magnified. Land is scarce so in high demand and is currently dominated by dairy farming. The Soil Farm are passionate about creating a regenerative farm for not only their own use in growing crops, seeds, raising animals and making compost, but are also committed to supporting others to learn and benefit from their knowledge to increase local food production on Guernsey. Our visit here was so inspiring, as again, it was a vast space cultivated by few hands, but their commitment and drive to make things happen was admirable.
In my next post I will write about our second stop on our trip to Pigment Organic Dyes in Devon. Meanwhile, I’m happy to announce myself, Charlotte and Laura will be hosting an informal conversation at Sculpture House on Monday 28th October to share in more detail what we saw and learnt on our trip and to start conversations around what the future of the Dye Garden at Sculpture House could be….
To book a free place, please follow the link below.
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