Emma D’Arcey

Consultant, Educator & Co- Founder of AO textiles

I work across several disciplines, as both a surface designer and colourist, alongside developing my research profile specialising in plant-based colour.

My current practice-based research focusses on the concept of using naturally occurring agricultural tree waste to create regenerative, viable, marketable natural dye.

I have a textile design background which includes an MA from Central Saint Martins.  Over the years I have developed a specialism in the art of marbling, pushing the boundaries & breaking the rules of this traditional craft.

Following my MA I founded my own business selling product ranges & designing marbled mono-prints for fashion, retail, haute-couture and interior markets.

With over 20 years of experience, I have built a considerable client list including Hermès Paris, Stella McCartney, Deborah Milner, Aveda, Liberty, Zoffany, Avenida, V&A, Hauser & Wirth and Gainsborough Silk Weavers.

Penny Walsh

AO Textiles

My journey as a colourist began during my time at the RCA when I travelled to Norway to study tapestry weaving.  While there I first encountered natural dyeing, employing traditional recipes and techniques to create colour from plants.
It was transforming to see how these dyes enabled the creation of ranges of related, subtly varied shades and hues, expanding my perception of colour. I came to realise the variety and inter-relationships of natural colours were unobtainable with synthetic dyes. This discovery became a great asset over the years as plant-based colour became the focus of my practice.
I continue to research and explore historic recipes often working from obscure archival recipes, adjusting them to be more in line with the requirements of colour for the 21st century. Key now is that they should be environmentally safe and ethically sourced.  Working with ao textiles has allowed a platform for my research contributing to developing repeatable, scalable colour suitable for production.

Karen Spurgin

AO Textiles

Over the years I have specialised in surface design working for many high-profile clients.

Between 2000 & 2014 I was the textile designer for the iconic for LA brand Dosa.  Working with Dosa allowed me to pursue design that put environmental and ethical concerns at the forefront. Mindful of the impact of textiles within the fashion system led me to co-found AO textiles, a consultancy with an acknowledged track record in the area of circular textile design. AO’s core principle specifically addresses 
research, development and application of sustainable practices for textile production. Focussing on natural dyeing, AO textiles challenges perceptions of colour for the 21st century. 

I am a member of the Bark Cloth Research Network which researches, investigates and showcases the properties and potential of bark cloth for contemporary, eco-luxury fashion. My research, alongside a microbiologist, explores the concept that naturally dyed textiles can impart health benefits.

I am currently a Senior Lecturer, at Istituto Marangoni, London.

Aranya Natural

Aranya Natural Dye Centre

Thus Aranya was born in 1994 with 6 challenged young adults. I named it Aranya after Ruby

Ghaznavi’s Aranya. After 2 workshops to familiarise everyone with the process, Aranya was officially

launched.

With no background what so ever in textiles, it was a daring venture but the Tata management supported us. We started with mud pots and bamboo stick stirrers and soon progressed to proper vessels and infrastructure. Initially we did plain dyeing but I realised that if we need to grow we have to go further. I got a book on shibori and the youngsters started learning from it. Because of the vibrancy of the colours so many imperfections were over looked. It was at this juncture that we had the good fortune of running into Yoshiko Wada at a Sutra conference. We realised that we were following her book on Shibori and invited her to visit us and conduct a workshop. A year later Yoshiko came to Aranya and we haven’t looked back since. She mentored us and guided us over the years to reach where we are today. Never in my wildest dreams did I envision the growth of Aranya to this extent. The associates who worked very hard, brightened their own lives as well, living with colours. Today we see happy, well adjusted youngsters who live with dignity and self respect. From the original 6 we now have 34associates, as we call them, working at Aranya Natural.Aranya became Aranya Natural to avoid being mixed up with Dacca’s Aranya. The innumerable workshops attended plus conferences and seminars enlightened us and held our hands during the process of growth.

Phoebe English

Phoebe English

The PHOEBE ENGLISH label, founded in 2011, creates pieces with close
attention to detail and quality, rejecting mass-made or ‘fast’
fashion.
The clothing comprises an ever-evolving search for communicative
design and construction, exploring a personal narrative through
surface structure, and textile engineering. As well as employing a
straightforward, natural and utilitarian nature.

Cavan McPherson

Colourist at Cavan Jayne

Cavan is a Scottish artist who graduated with a masters degree in womenswear knit from the Royal College of Art in 2018. Her masters work explored a passion in fusing sculptural knitwear with woven silks, meanwhile building an archive of ethical fabrication and colour pigment.

Sponsorship from the British Fashion Council, Dewar Arts Award Scotland and the Society of Colourists is a testament to Cavan’s dedication to her practice.

She now resides in London working on various special projects with keen interests in natural colour pigment, education and biodiversity within fashion.

Patrizia Meroni

Head of Production for Clerici Tessuto

Clerici Tessuto combines traditional Comascan craftsmanship with the innovative excellence of the Como silk industry, searching always,

to research and innovate the usage of yarns in woven and printing techniques.

Steeped in textile tradition, producing at the forefront of luxury since 1922, Clerici today is one of the key textile suppliers to the worlds’ luxury market in apparel, accessories and home furnishings, transforming and selling more than 3 million metres of fabric per year.

The Clerici group controls quality as it is a fully vertical production chain comprised of yarn dyeing, warping, weaving, printing, dyeing and finishing. The company has always looked ahead and now seeks to design and manufacture in better ways, whilst looking after their clients and employees; guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, today Clerici aims to become a fully ecological and environmentally sustainable manufacturer, offering ethical fabrics with our future in view.

David Santandreu

Natural Dyer

David runs a botanical colour consultancy from his atelier in the South of France. David specialises in indigo fermentation vats, his practise is based on North African recipes that he has perfected over the years, further to living in Morocco, dyeing yarn for carpet making.

Davi d

Micheal Stanley Jones

Programme Management Officer at United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Adopted in 2015 as a successor to the Millennium Development Goals, the SDGs are the ones I have nothing but good words to say about. There are 193 countries members of the UN and they all have their own problems and difficulties but they all came together and approved the 17 Sustainable Development Goals showing a strong commitment to eradicate extreme poverty and protect natural resources by 2030. They also agreed on 169 targets for measuring the achievements of those goals. The takeaway is that the entire globe agreed on those goals.

The way the United Nations approached it was also innovative. We used ICTs and technology for reaching out and engaging with more than 3 million people participating in hundreds of events at a global scale to give them the opportunity to express themselves regarding what kind of future they wanted. And those opinions became the 17 goals. There are no other documents in the history of the world that have had that kind of participatory democracy in its preparation.

Michel Garcia

Ethnobotanist/ Owner of Plantes et Couleurs

Michel Garcia is a French national born in Morocco. He was nineteen when he first discovered natural dyes. Since then he has followed his love of both plants and pigments. In 1998 he formed the association Couleur Garance (Madder Colour). The association hoped to connect young ecologically sensitive artisans with the substantial expertise of an older generation of dyers. Under his direction, Couleur Garance produced over twenty monographs on natural dyes and dye plants.

In 2002 Michel founded the Botanical Garden of Dye Plants at the Château de Lauris. In 2003 an international forum and market for natural dyes was added. A year later a resource centre was established.

In 2006 Michel handed over leadership of Couleur Garance so that he could further pursue his interest in colour and dye techniques. He has published three titles on natural dyes showing the range of shades available and how to obtain them.

Michel teaches and advises internationally on natural colours and dyes..

Xylem Papercraft

Coming soon…

Rosa Chang

Founder of the Indigo Shade Map/ Researcher at MICA

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Indigo Shade Map is an interactive infographic map originally created by artist and grower, Rosa Sung Ji Chang, in 2016, then re-developed in the spring of 2020. This initiative started as a way to map the use of three different kinds of indigo grown around the world, Indigofera tinctoria, Polygonum tinctorium, and Woad. Each indigo plant is marked with a corresponding shade of blue on the map. Indigo dye is an ancient dye found in textile traditions practiced by various cultures around the world. The main purpose of the Indigo Shade Map is to show how one particular natural dye is still widely and continuously practiced today. Each indigo plant visually looks very different and grows in diverse climates and regions. Although these plants contain “blue pigments” in their leaves, each shade produced is different. These powerful plants weave together many lives and peoples in complex textile history to better connect one another.

Patrice Marraud des Grottes

Owner of Elitis

Design very contemporary products and always have an edge on the latest techniques, this could be our motto. Our in-house design department, a hive of activity like that of an experimental laboratory, traces the lines of research, diversity and innovative mixtures. The proposals, always surprising, create an event at every international exhibition.

Jo Pierce

Colour Matter

Senior Lecturer, Print Design Leader, BA (Hons) Textile Design, central Saint Martins and Co Founder at colour-matter.

Jo Pierce is Senior Lecturer and Print Pathway Leader at Central Saint Martins BA Textile Design Course. Alongside her teaching she is a member of Textile Futures Research Community. Jo’s practice includes textiles and materials based research, design, exhibition and collaboration. Individual work involves pattern, print, surface and material exploration in relation to social, sustainable, craft and digital dialogues. Projects create crafted narratives that foster connection and longevity to material things and places.Research thinking through material culture, sustainable design practice, craft + digital making + social design contexts

Rebecca Hoyes

Colour Matters

Rebecca Hoyes is an associate lecturer BA Textile Design at Central Saint Martins. She is a textile designer and practice based researcher with an interest in traditional and digital craft techniques, material culture and the social and cultural contexts for design. Rebecca has worked as a design consultant on a diverse range of projects with Industry and NGO partners. Recently in partnership with the British Council and Turquoise Mountain Trust Rebecca has facilitated design collaborations between artisan communities in Asia, Africa and the Middle East working with heritage techniques for a contemporary context. Rebecca regularly contributes to colour and material insight workshops defining future colour and material directions for Industry.

Mette Lindhal-Wise

Gather Yarn

I am an indie dyer, dying on natural materials with materials I can find in nature. I’m inspired by the landscape around me, and use plants that I have foraged myself either in my garden in South East London, my allotment, or from the area around my summer cottage by the coast in Denmark. I also dye with food ‘scraps’ i.e. rhubarb leaves or onion peel, or with sustainably sources raw plant material to obtain particular colors. I dye on natural materials too, primarily wool, organic bamboo and occasionally on silk. Sustainability is very important to me too and I relish the fact that I can literally compost the waste products of my natural dyeing practice.

 I work from my kitchen in Herne Hill and teach natural dyeing at various locations in South East London – lately my courses have been run from the lovely greenhouses in Brockwell Park.  During lockdown I also experimented with running ‘dye-alongs’ on Zoom and found them great fun! I particularly enjoy teaching seasonal dyeing courses where I can get to know participants over the course of several sessions and we can explore the many different plants that can used to obtain amazing hues at different times of the year. 

I have always loved foraging for plants to use in my cooking or as medicine and learning to dye with plants was a natural extension of this.  I work within both the Nordic and British natural dye traditions with a bit of inspiration from America and Australia. As a result, I am able to access a very broad range of traditional and proven dye plants to obtain a range of beautiful colours. 

 I am fascinated by the sheer range and variation of colour that can be obtained with natural materials – all the colours of the rainbow and more, infinitely variable. Some can managed by the dyer, others, frankly, just occur due to the magic that is natural dyeing. Naturally dyed yarns have a depth and warmth to their colour and pair beautifully with other naturally dyed yarns or will look amazing on their own. 

 Dyeing with natural materials is a deeply rooted traditional approach to dyeing fibres - but it also taps into very modern concerns about the environment, connection to the land and the joy of foraging.

Cara Marie Piazza

Cara Marie Piazza is a Natural Dyer and artisan working in new york city.

She creates one-of-a-kind textiles only using natural dyestuffs such as botanicals, plant matter, minerals, non-toxic metals, and food wastes. She treats her fabrics through alchemical dye sessions, ancient shibori techniques, and bundle dyeing, transforming each textile into its very own story. She works with both designers and artists to realize their Natural dyeing needs as well as creates custom pieces for private clients.

Cara teaches workshops on natural dyeing and curates unique experiences merging healing, color, and art. She is committed to fostering and forging relationships with the food and floral industries to transform their waste products into a valuable source of dye. 

Designer and artist clients include Eileen Fisher, Samuel Snider, Eckhaus Latta, Alice Waese, Dena Yago,  1-100, Club Monaco, chakrubs, Ochii, Jennifer Behr, 11:11, Judi Rosen, Mimi Prober, and more.

Dede Styles

Growing up in a house with an antique spinning wheel, a pet sheep, and a mother with an extensive knowledge of botany started me off with a strong background for work with native dye plants. 

As a member of the Southern Highlands Craft Guild I do dye demonstrations to educate children's groups and the general public about natural dyes. I also teach workshops to help dyers learn to identify native plants to use for dye. While doing that I also teach about some of the dye plants that are important for pollinators and erosion control. I am much more of a teacher than a production dyer. My masters degree is in early childhood education. I enjoy working with children and hope to start at least a few on a career of using natural dyes.

Together with a photographer friend, we self-published a small book to help other dyers identify dye plants that are common in the southern Appalachian mountains and beyond.

I am 74 years old and still live in the house I grew up in here in the mountains of western North Carolina, U. S. A.

My favorite thing about wild sourcing natural dye is the time spent out in the fields gathering arm loads of dye plants and how it connects me to all the people who have done that same thing far back across the years.

Andrew Filarowski

The Society of Dyer’s and Colourists

The SDC is a provider of colour education, offering a range of internationally recognised coloration courses and qualifications. Our mission is to educate the changing world in the science of colour. Founded in 1884, the SDC became a registered charity in 1962 and was awarded a Royal Charter in 1963. The SDC remains the only organisation in the world able to award the Chartered Colourist status. The SDC works globally, with worldwide membership and is a centre for networking and community engagement amongst the coloration industry.

Our courses are now exclusively delivered online at colour.network with a growing range of topics at various levels for various parts of the supply chain.

We are actively involved in with a diverse range of stakeholders from dye manufacturers, dye users, brands/ retailers, certification bodies, standards bodies and colleges/ universities covering colour both in relation to its use technically and in design to create a unique meeting place of minds.

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Rupa Trivedi

Owner of Adiv Pure Nature

Adiv Pure Nature our natural dye studio, is based in Mumbai. It is dedicated to sustainability of nature through natural dyed textiles, while preserving this ancient tradition as a sustainable circular green process. While we use the known natural dyes to create breathable beautiful textiles, The Temple Blessings is our flagship program. Adiv’s Temple Blessings project was born from a passionate desire to use the flower offerings that were traditionally tossed into the sea after being offered at temples. I was inspired by the dye potential held in every cast-off flower. The Temple Project, our flagship program, is a unique initiative of recycled temple offerings as dyes for our fabrics. The flower blessings are given new breath, re-registered on cloth as a physical reminder of their original intention. My obsession became the core of our work I began my initial research and experiments of dyeing with marigolds because they are the most important flowers in all of our rituals. They are also the cause of considerable environmental pollution.

Nicole Stjernsward

Founder of KAIKU Colours

Coming soon…

Rashmi Bharti (Avani)

AVANI

Rashmi has been working in the field of rural development for the past 33 years in India, in the states of Uttarakhand, Delhi and Orissa. She co-founded Avani, a voluntary organization, in the Central Himalayas in India, 24 years ago. She has worked in the field of alternative education, handlooms, natural dyes, community health, natural resource management, strategic planning, fundraising and creation of sustainable livelihoods in remote rural areas. Rashmi identified a persistent loss of the ancient traditions of weaving, natural dyeing, and hand-spinning, and came up with the idea to create a sustainable enterprise that employed local people, particularly women, in creating natural dyes and textiles, fostering economic activity and giving people viable, dignified livelihood opportunities that were environmentally friendly and rooted in traditional Himalayan crafts. And this is how Avani was created today, Avani’s work has spawned the Kumaon Earthcraft Self-Reliant Cooperative, or KEC. Formally begun in 2005 and led by Rashmi Bharti, the cooperative works with over 1,400 beneficiaries, 78% of whom are women, to produce naturally dyed silk and wool textiles. Since its inception, Avani has introduced several innovations to the Kumaon region, including, most notably, introducing indigo cultivation. While indigo has not been traditionally cultivated in the Himalayas, the crop is well-suited to the climate, and this cultivation has provided a vital source of supplementary income to many farmers. Throughout its production, Avani employs this same focus on blending tradition with innovation to create textiles that are both contemporary in design whilst preserving ancient knowledge and skills. Through their work with natural dyes, Avani has planted over 5,500 dye- yielding trees, harvested over 1 ton of eupatorium (a highly invasive plant species that can be converted to dye), and reclaimed over 125 acres of wasteland for indigo cultivation. Avani’s work has had substantial economic, social, and environmental impacts on the Kumaon region, generating stable income for women for the past 25 years. This income has allowed local women to fund their children’s educations, pay for home improvements, and open savings accounts, among other activities. What is interesting is how Rashmi approached the world of natural dyes… Avani has experimented with over 50 Himalayan plants, ultimately settling on those which are most abundant and whose extraction does not harm the plant or the ecology of the area. With the exception of madder root (used to produce red), all of Avani’s pigments are sourced from the leaves, fruits, and flowers of a plant, rather than roots or bark. She is the recipient of the Janaki Devi Bajaj Award for Rural Entrepreneurship and women’s empowerment. She, together with her husband has also received the T N Khushoo award for Conservation and Livelihoods. This award was presented by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She has also received the Nari Shakti award for Avani’s work with women’s empowerment. The award was presented by the Honorable President of India, Mr Ram Nath Kovind in March 2018.

Patrick Brenac & Isabelle Castel Brenac

Patrick BRENAC & Isabelle CASTEL BRENAC, founders & co-owners of GREEN’ING

Patrick Brenac was born in a family of wine makers in the south of France. He graduated as a PhD in natural substances at the University of Montpellier (France - 1993) and made a Post-Doc at Cornell University (USA). In 1996, he was the first technical researcher hired at CRITT Horticole for the development of the project on natural dyes, then launched Couleurs de Plantes in 2005 and was its first President and Director until 2013. In 2014, he created GREEN’ING with Isabelle CASTEL BRENAC, his partner (engineer in water, nature and quality management, from Polytech Montpellier). In 2017, the company moved to the South of France to expand. GREEN’ING specializes in natural colors and their uses in textiles, cosmetics and other industrial activities. We offer a wide range of selected natural dyes, partly produced or biosourced locally, from organic crops or upcycling. Our business goes from private & craft dyers to large industry, from France to International. We made efforts on improving the quality of extracts, fighting against falsifications and greenwashing by carrying out analyzes of naturality. We also offer consulting, expertise and technical support on natural colors, or natural ingredients in the broad sense. At GREEN’ING our values are based on innovation through nature and the development of bioeconomy. Our key words are naturality, rigor & innovation, reactivity and human relationships.

Sophie Holt

Pigment Organic Dyes

Sophie is the founder of social enterprise Pigment Organic Dyes which grows high quality, Organic dye plants alongside supporting adults with additional needs into training and employment. PIGMENT considers its trainees integral to the business, which supplies artists, dyers and the wider textile industry. Sophie’s passion to grow dyes stems from her Organic horticultural background and love for natural textiles. PIGMENT sells dyes, dye kits, and dyed fabric. Sophie lives in South Devon and farms as part of the Baddaford Collective.

Florence Hawkins

Print and Dye Technician at Central Saint Martins

Florence is a French textile designer who has lived in London since her early 20’s.

She is the co-founder of Ceres studio, a natural dye and print studio based in Brixton. Together with Lara Mantell, they research , collaborate on projects and teach the exciting process of printing with natural dyes.

Florence joined the Print & Dye team at CSM a couple of years ago, working with a diversity of students across BA and MA courses in Fashion, Textiles, Future Materials and Bio Design. Within her role, she encourages students in engaging with more sustainable techniques and material. She has started to grow a dye garden on the roof at CSM, and is now working on setting up a Natural Indigo dye vat in the dye studio.

She thinks that connecting and sharing with others eco-conscience designers, artists and researchers is essential to build relevant knowledge and experiences toward a more sustainable approach to the textile production. She is pleased to be part of the Dyers Circle.

Claudy Jongstra

Claudy Jongstra is known worldwide for her monumental textile artworks and architectural installations, with organic surfaces and vibrant colours that reflect Jongstra’s masterful innovations in the ancient techniques of wool felting and plant-based dyeing. Claudy Jongstra’s oeuvre, often installed in large public spaces, is also represented within many international museums and institutions as well as private and corporate collections.

In 2001, Jongstra established her studio in Friesland, a rural northern province of The Netherlands, where she also developed a biodynamic farm at De Kreake in Húns with partner Claudia Busson, cultivating dyers plants and collecting generic seed for future propagation. Jongstra sources wool, her primary artistic medium, from a local flock of rare, indigenous Drenthe Heath sheep (the oldest breed in Northern Europe). This radical soil-to- soil philosophy, no-waste approach and inclusive way
of collaborating creates a vibrant, community-based and completely sustainable process culminating in Claudy Jongstra’s charismatic artworks.

Juliano Bastos

MANUI Brasil

Juliana Bastos is a stylist, dyer and creator of the brand Manui Brasil. Researcher in the area of sustainability in fashion with a focus on natural dyeing. Lecturer in modeling, sewing, collection planning and textile technology courses. Graduated in Fashion Design at Faculdade Santa Marcelina, currently studying for a master's degree in Textiles and Fashion at Each Usp.

Christopher Buckley

Wolfson College, Oxford Doctor of Philosophy

I study traditional weaving practices around the world, using classical and phylogenetic techniques, in order to study how cultures evolve over time and to reconstruct their histories. A current focus is the evolution of loom designs, which links to questions of how complex technology evolves and is sustained in traditional, oral cultures. I did my PhD in physical chemistry, and there are some 'legacy papers' listed here that relate to this topic.

Filippo Girani

CEO of GIRANI

Girani is engaged in various projects to create a more sustainable and responsible product.
Particular attention is paid to the development of "green" ecological fabrics and to the water consumption.
Our Collections development concept satisfies the most refined stylistic needs with the maximum attention to the planet and its resources.
We were the forerunners of the development of Viscose FSC® certified, viscose produced with traceable wood pulp from sustainable managed forests.
We use "Cotton Linters" viscose where the cellulose comes from the waste of cotton processing.
We are GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certified for silk and cotton fabrics: environmental certification that attests the origin of organic agricultural raw materials traceable in compliance with social and environmental criteria and the use of chemical products with low toxicological values.
We also use acetate NAIA with FSC® certified cellulose pulp and low environmental impact processing.
Our hope is to make our contribution to creating greater "green" awareness.

Jenny Dean

Author

Jenny Dean has been researching and using natural plant dyes for over forty years. She has written widely on the subject and her books include Wild Colour, Colours from Nature &A Heritage of Colour. 

She teaches and lectures on natural dyeing and has led workshops in Spain and Zambia as well as at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Cambridge University Botanic Garden, Fishbourne Roman Palace and the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft. She is a member of the Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers and her dyed yarns are in collections at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and at the Royal Centre for Cultural Heritage in Brussels. 

Further information on natural dyes and dyeing can be found on www.jennydean.co.uk