All hail the Dachtylopius coccus, an insect indigenous to Mexico that gave the world its first taste of reliable red. Before the creation of aniline dyes in 1856, this generous bug was the so-called New World’s second-most export to Spain, after gold. A recent exhibition about its use in textiles and painting at the Belles Artes gave cochineal its due.

Our first attempt to see the show was for naught; families had coiled around the Belles Artes, standing in the sun for hours to glimpse this first-ever, Mexico-produced show.

So we amused ourselves at the Museo Franz Meyer and ended up attending a few days later, joined by our hosts Claudia and Frank Cornew.

The show introduced us to the insect’s use as a dye source in textiles since prehistoric times. It feeds on a particular type of cactus that causes an enzyme reaction yielding, once crushed, a vibrant hue. (There’s still a small industry in cochineal; the topmost photos are from a farm outside Oaxaca.)

Si con grana te quieres vestir, a Oaxaca debes ir.
If you want to wear red, you have to go to Oaxaca.

Next, it was fun to chase the brushstroke pops of carmine across the gilded frames. Big names were there—Delacroix, Velasquez, Turner, even van Gogh. The painters ground the dried insect into pigment for use in their oil paintings. (I liked the look of this juicy-fat Jesus, a realistic depiction of a baby if I ever saw one.)

A few years ago, at London’s National Portrait Gallery, I ran into this fellow: William Henry Perkin. The British chemist was using coal tar to synthesize quinine when he accidentally yielded purple mauveine, or Tyrian purple, more commonly called mauve. (His eureka color matched my hair at the time.) Thus began the death of natural dyes—cochineal, indigo, woad and the like—in favor of those that could more reliably and affordably be produced in the lab.

It had me thinking about how often I see shades of red—ochre to coral, beet to bugambilia, fuchsia to crimson—in Oaxaca and D.F., some Natural Red #4, some not. It’s even used in food and cosmetics, as a recent Wired article attests. Here’s a scattershot of images celebrating the color of love, blood and fire—the yin to indigo’s yang—to get us through this gray winter.

Heck, why not a few more. We can never have too much Mexican rojo, no?

And one final one, taken at the Museo de Textiles in Oaxaca City. It’s an installation by Christina Kim, the brilliant designer behind the clothing line Dosa. Wave the gray away!

 

A few weeks ago, Mexico City called. The exhibition “Mexican Red, the Cochineal in Art” at the Belles Artes was too good to resist, as was a too-good-to-be-true airfare. So Kim and I hopped a flight. (This is the first of three posts: the next feature a day in the dyeing studio and the exhibition itself.)

Naturally, the person next to Kim was also a knitter, so their row clicked away the whole flight.

In Polanco, we had the buena fortuna to stay with the family of Claudia Cornew, fiber artist extraordinaire whom we met a year ago at the International Shibori Symposium in Oaxaca City. She and her husband, Frank, and their whipsmart daughters made us feel extraordinarily welcome.

On Saturday, we joined Claudia for a trip to the San Angel market, where some of Mexico City’s top designers and craftspeople have booths. I always appreciate the indigenous textile fashions of Carla Fernandez, so finding her shop there was a treat, and we also met a new brand, 1/8 Takamura, that captured our eye—and a few pesos. (We later visited Carmen Rion’s shop in Condesa, another design standout.)

After the market, our next stop was MUAC, the contemporary art museum on the university campus. Brilliant shows by Russian provocateurs Chto Delat and local artist Yoshua Okun reinforced the power of art to skewer. Plus, MUOC’s shop had a gorgeous shibori poncho by none other than Carla Fernandez. (No need to buy; we know how to dye that!) A complete museum recap of our visit: the Museo Jumex, with a show called “Learning To Read with John Baldessari,” and the Museo Franz Meyer and Belles Artes.

After tortilla soup at MUAC, we raced to Coyoacan to catch Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul. Alas, even an hour before close, the line snaked down the block. We had each been before, so the tragedy wasn’t as grave as the self-portrait of us against its exterior blue wall shows. And just like that, we had a marvelous evening in the wildly vibrant zocalo of one of the funkiest neighborhoods of D.F. Mole, mescal, guys playing ancient concertinas, a man with two chihuahuas, plus a sighting of the indigenous hairless Xoloitzcuintli—Kahlo’s favorite breed—made everything all right.

Next installment: “Dyed and Gone to Heaven,” a day in Claudia’s fiber studio.

Today’s New York Times features an eye-popping, jaw-dropping article, “Chinese Village Keeps Alive a Tradition of Indigo Dyeing.”  The timing is sweet, because the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s exhibition “Miao Clothing and Jewelry from China” just opened, offering a firsthand look at these Miao masterpieces.

How I envy the article’s author, Amy Qin, and what I would give for a similar chance to immerse Kim and me among those textile artists of the Dali village.

One thing I loved is how the Dong explain away an uncooperative vat, blaming bad-vat feng shui or women’s woes: periods or pregnancy. The glossy surface comes from treating the dyed fabric with cowhide extract—I had heard pig’s blood—and hours of banging away on it with a cudgel.

About this time last year, Todd and I went to China—Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu—where my eyes feasted on silks (while he discovered some unorthodox Santas).

 

The closest I came to Dong indigo was at Beijing’s mega market, Panjiayuan, where our friend, Max Deng, led me to these Miao women.

 

The Times article claims, ““You can’t buy this type of handmade cloth at the market.” On that, I beg to differ: I bought three gleaming rolls, and they’re precious to me for their raw beauty, their story and their possibility.

Our last Dye Day of the season consisted of dyeing skeins of wool and cotton. Which means we have all winter to knit. (Read to the end of the post for a celebrity surprise!)

Kim, you might know, has a room devoted to her stash. I myself have a few vintage suitcases stuffed with it.

Some we did in straight-up indigo; others, we dyed with sumak and tansy, then overdyed in indigo.

One innovation was to create our own ikat pattern, formed by dyeing before knitting or weaving. To do that, we dunked about a third of each skein, then left the other two-thirds natural. Kim has made a few stunning pieces that use the improvisational pattern. Below is a taste, along with a pic of Gary Cooper, who makes knitting look classy.

Every now and then, we run out of fabric to dye. Recently, I purchased a weird cream-colored faux-fur vest at a thrift store. Kim instantly saw its potential, wanting to replicate the eclipse totality of last week. You go, Sami-tribal-woodland-creature girl!

To make her eclipse, she took a glass lid from a big jar, wrapped it tight against the faux fur with nylon string, then dunked, dunked, dunked it. I’ll include a pic next week once it’s dried and fluffed out.

Also, a shout-out to our guest dyer, Parker! She’s behind that beautiful six-moon piece.

A note on our ever-evolving vat strategy
We’re proceeding with three vats: henna, fructose and lye. Our results were great using the henna and lye vats; the fructose was a bore.

Latest innovations: Like nurses, we now take the temperature of our vats (no hotter than 105 degrees), heating with a new immersion heater designed to keep cow water troughs liquid in winter, and also their pH (optimally about 10, depending). This has introduced another layer of fussiness, but ultimately we hope we can dial in a recipe that consistently works.

On using henna
Upside: will keep producing with care and tending, showing the beauty of a natural vat.
Downside: sometimes produces a sludgy gray-blue.

• Henna recipe: Following M. Garcia’s recipe, as interpreted by a million other dyers, we combine 1 part indigo, 2 parts lime and 3 parts henna. Let sit. Voila.

On using lye
Upside: yields fantastic, deep indigo color.
Downside: gets exhausted, not much hope of replenishing/restoring.

• Lye recipe: 1 t. washing soda, mixed with 1 T. indigo powder, stirred in hot (not boiling) water. In vat: add water, add 1/8 t. lye (sodium hydroxide). Add 1 oz. Rit color remover (sodium hydrosulfite). Add indigo blend. Wait 30–45 minutes.
• Don’t rush the vat! (Open wine now.)

Another excellent thing about Kim is, between her and Dan, they have everything. You need a scale to weigh slaked calcium hydroxide in grams? She has it. Need a second propane tank for another vat? In the garage. You want to use marbles in a shibori technique? Yep, hold on just a sec. Clamps—you want clamps? Which type?

It makes some dye days easy breezy. Others, like yesterday, were frustrating, but not because of lack of materials. After four hours of translating recipes from Spanish and monkeying around with the chemistry of our vats—another attempt at Michel Garcia’s 1-2-3 method; the other one with lye (sodium hydroxide)—we got our hands really, deeply blue. Looming Jane does a nice job describing our Garcia bio-vat approach.

To dye her kuno shibori, Kim stitched in marbles and two types of dried beans. Here’s a great how-to article in Seamwork featuring shibori techniques you might want to try. Using tablecloths, I was going for graphic patterns on a big scale.

 

We started this experiment before Kim’s big adventure abroad. It was a rainy, cold, crap day in May, so inside time was just the thing. Below are the three types of shibori using clamps, called itajime in Japanese, we explored: kikko (tortoise fold), bomaki (pole wrapping) and trellis fold, which is a square fold using a diagonal stick as a resist.

A month later, we set up our vats. After dunking away, this is what—bah dum bum— unfolded.

A Handbook of Indigo Dyeing by Vivien Prideaux

This 2003 how-to has several recipes for indigo vats: zinc and lime, hydrosulfite, and bio-vat (with dates!). I found the explanations for shibori-tying techniques very clear and a good starting point to try to understand some of that beautiful work we saw in the Mary Hark -Indigo Swatchbook show we saw at the Textile Center. I also like the simple pattern for “the Bog Jacket.”