Making a vat of indigo dye is a bit like baking a cake: the measurements must be exactly right. In the summer of 2017, the former initially proved to be tricky for mother-daughter artists Jeanette and Ellie Orrell. “The trials were quite frustrating; it had seemed so easy in Japan where there was a vat made, ready each morning to dip fabric in,” recalls Jeanette, of the Arts Council of Wales grant that enabled her to spend three weeks learning to dye at an indigo farm an hour’s train journey from Tokyo. She was at a crossroads creatively. “I’d always drawn plants but using indigo brought them to the centre of my practice. I remember the feeling of standing over the vat for the first time and thinking, ‘I’ve waited my whole life for this moment.’”
She returned home to north Wales, as writer and film-maker Ellie later describes in her debut memoir An Indigo Summer, carrying “a suitcase filled with folded indigo and a sketchbook of botanical drawings in dark ink.” With Ellie back after her first year studying art history at the University of St Andrews and Jeanette keen to test out her newly acquired skills, the pair organically began working together as artists for the first time. “Until that point our practices hadn’t really met but I was mesmerised by the indigo,” says Ellie. The difficulty in translating the processes lay in the fact that the conditions – the water, the weather – were unlike Japan. “When mum was figuring out how to dye with indigo, it changed our relationship into more of a friendship.”
Jeanette uses an iron vat, grinding indigo into a fine powder with a pestle and mortar, then combining it with iron and calcified lime in a small jar. The mixture is stirred until it turns green and left for around 40 minutes before being transferred to a big bucket of warm water. “The difference between indigo and other forms of dyeing is that the fabric is submerged for two minutes, then hung out to oxidise for around 20 minutes,” she explains, adding another anomaly is that the dye sits on the surface of cloth, rather than sinking in. Ellie reflects, “it was like nothing I’d ever seen before; the way it has to oxidise in order to turn blue is pure magic.” Density is achieved by re-dipping and it’s unusual for two pieces of fabric, even those dyed on the same day and dipped the same number of times, to look identical.
At the beginning, because the results were so hit and miss, the duo used whatever materials they could find, from old linen sheets to charity shop jumpers. “I remember saying, let me get my clothes and we’ll dye everything,” says Ellie, only half-joking. “For me, it was a real shift in terms of seeing learning from a parent in a different light. I knew I was experiencing something special.” So much so that she made notes, which, in 2020, became an article about creativity as a tool for dealing with grief, then the book. “When mum was learning to dye with indigo, she was processing the loss of her dad. What I found interesting was that during the pandemic, when everyone was collectively trying to process loss, many people started making things,” she says.
The pair didn’t just master the intricacies of the indigo vat, they also became adept at resist-dyeing – a technique involving making nori rice flour paste and pushing it through water-proofed shibugami (mulberry paper) stencils that are reinforced with a silk mesh on one side. Jeanette’s first collection of indigo pieces were wool blankets adorned with paste drawings, often applied directly using a hog-hair brush (a technique called tsutsugaki in Japan). More recently this has evolved into stitched collages on linen that incorporate other natural dyes. “I work outdoors so indigo dyeing is seasonal for me,” she says. “The winter is spent doing stitched collages, drawings and other dyeing while planning what I’m going to do with indigo next.”
This cyclical rhythm of the year suits Jeanette’s considered approach to making. “I naturally work slowly and carefully; it’s how I live,” she confirms. The pair run indigo dyeing workshops together. “We do so much else together, like foraging and cooking, and it all feeds into one. It’s about a way of living, a complete creative life.”
Jeanette wears the TOAST Lia Garment Dyed Boat Neck Tee in Dark Navy, the Patch Pocket Organic Cord Jacket, and the Crosshatch Ikat Pull on Trousers.
Ellie wears the TOAST Organic Cord Swingy Jacket, the Eden Wool Cashmere Raglan Cardigan in Charcoal, and the Twisted Seam Cotton Linen Trousers.
Words by Emma Love.
Photography by Leia Morrisson.
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