A few weeks back, I noticed a big pile of branches trimmed off the trees at Oyama Senmaida. The next day, I coincidentally read about extracting pink colors from cherry trees.
So of course, I had to go ask Kaori Ishida, my local botanical color expert and the dye master at Oyama Senmaida, about the pile of branches. Are they sakura? Do they really make pink? May I have some?
Cherry does make pink, Kaori told me, but these were branches from apricot trees and they produce an orangish color. She showed me some photos of the last time she’d extracted apricot color. Wow, cool! We set some play dates to experiment and extract color from these branches.
With a pile of new growth from the last year or two, we created hundreds of little pot-friendly sticks about 5cm long. It was fun work, but we could have used better tools than my ratty old secateurs. Note to self: get a guillotine.
On Tuesday this week, our dye-making day, we simmered the branches for about 45 minutes. The sticks softened and under the bark, bright yellow color peeked through.
We soaked the alum-mordanted fabric in the dye bath for about 45 minutes, and spent the time looking through Kaori’s collection of books. When we rinsed the dye in a bath of alum water, the color was very pale.
We gave them a second dip and rinse, but the result was still only light yellowish. There was definitely a change – the pure white fabrics were off white and the unbleached muslin was a deeper yellow-pink – but it wasn’t the bright orangey-yellow I hoped for.
So it goes with nature. She’s fickle and unpredictable.
I took a bag of boiled sticks home with me to play with in the shed. Maybe, like cherry trees and my cedar cones, I could extract a different color on a second boil.
And I did! After boiling out some additional thin yellow color, I decided to try adjusting the pH. I didn’t like the pale yellow so an experiment wouldn’t hurt.
I poured a bit of baking soda into the pot (unscientifically, I didn’t measure). It fizzed up and the liquor turned dark! Wow!
I overdyed two of my cotton gauze handkerchieves from the day before. Still pale, but orange-pink now. Kaori had given me one of the tenugui that she’d dyed, so I gave that a shibori overdye. Almost invisible tone contrast, but there is a difference in color. And I put some fresh white pieces in. They turned out pale pink.
Not a fan of pastels, I need to improve my level of patience. Will the dye darken if I leave it in the bath significantly longer? Is it better to dye a piece multiple times? Should I make the dye bath stronger? Use a different mordant? Practice and experience (and more conversations with Kaori) will give me answers.
I will be making paper with the remaining dye bath, and I set up a lake to extract the pigment. Stay tuned for part 2 of Apricot Colors.
