Going natural dye

Bangladesh is reviving natural dyes to save the centuries-old tradition of using organic colours

Decorative forms and colours have forever inspired human desire for beauty beyond basic needs. They delved into nature to source materials and colours to make their simple homes and clothing as well as magnificent cave paintings and monuments which have lost none of their luster and beauty in spite of centuries of exposure to the elements, dust and moisture. The vivid colours of ancient manuscripts, textiles and works of art in museum collections bear eloquent testimony to the durability of natural dyes.

Magical colours

Historically the Indian Subcontinent was famous worldwide for the quality and excellence of its decorative textiles. One of the finest skills of the traditional artisans was their surface patterning of cotton fabrics in brilliant, colour-fast organic dyes. At the height of their popularity during the Mughal era, more than 300 tints were in constant use creating a magical palette of colours. The pure flawless colours of the hand-painted and printed textiles of India had a quality of fastness unknown elsewhere, and dominated world trade for centuries.

Revival of natural dyes

The movement for the revival and promotion of traditional arts and crafts, including natural dyes, was initiated in this region by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay of India in the 1950s. My chance meeting with her at a conference in 1979 inspired me to work for the revival of organic dyes in Bangladesh. It started as a Research and Development Project in 1982 and created six colours for use in dyeing and block printing, which was undertaken with the help of training from Indian experts like K. V. Chandramouli, Toofan Rafai and Md Jamil.

In the next two years, the project experimented with numerous indigenous plants and established 15 colour-fast dyes and conducted extensive training workshops for artisans and craft organisations across the country. This was followed up with two more years of research under FAO funding, through which the repertoire of colours was expanded to 30 dyes extracted from common flowers, seeds, fruit, wood shavings and extracts, some of them waste materials like peel, leaves and dried flowers, etc.

Nature’s gift

Nature has given us all the colours. Natural dye sources range from marigold and pomegranate, yielding bright shades of deep gold and olive, to the reds and maroons of the more rare madder (manjit), and the blues and greens of indigo. Cutch (khayer), myrabalan (hartaki), raintree (shilkarai), jackfruit and betel-nut, easily available across the country, provide entire ranges of rich brown, grey, beige, yellow, and pink.  Waste materials like onion peel, eucalyptus and casuarina leaves, gulmohur petals, etc., give beautiful shades of gold, olive, khaki, pink, green and a number of other colours. Combining these dyes extends the range from vivid reds, blues, greens and purples to autumnal shades of golds, beiges, olives and other light hues.

 

Sharing the knowledge

The most exciting development in recent decades has been the revival of indigo after almost a century, by the Mennonite Central Committee, and later CARE, with technical support from Aranya. For years people were under the impression that the indigofera tinctoria plant which yields indigo had been wiped out in Bangladesh. In fact farmers had always cultivated the plant as compost; so indigo had never vanished from here, only its use had shifted from dye to fertiliser.
Although there was no difference of opinion in the region about the economic and social importance of natural dyes, but questions persisted about their commercial viability. Aranya, a small fairtrade enterprise, was set up in 1990 to disprove this view and it has done so successfully over the last three decades. Through continuous experimentation, Aranya has extracted fast colours from waste materials and established the fact that many dyes yield 2 or 3 shades, cutting the cost of production substantially.

 

Aranya has shared its expertise with craftspeople, development and commercial organisations through training workshops across the country; it has conducted similar programmes abroad in countries as diverse as the UK, Turkey, USA, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka; and through its efforts, initiated natural dye projects in India, Malaysia and Pakistan. Today Bangladesh heads the World Crafts Council's Natural Dye Programme and is considered one of the leading countries in this field.