A few months ago it hit the German natural dyers: no more Brazilwood. For those who are not acquainted with this dye: Brazilwood (the heartwood from Casealpina echinata) dyes bright red, very fast on wool and silk, medium fast on cotton and absolutely not fast on linen. It is the only dye that gives wool this particular shocking red and much sought after by dyers. And now this. The storage of dealers slowly emptied and there were no more supplies.
Back then
As I said, brazilwood comes from the heartwood (which is the innermost core of a grown up tree) of certain trees in Brazil. The red dye was a luxury and sought after ever since the dawn of book inscribing. Certain red dye for book illuminations was made from this dye and it was used as a luxurious addition in fabrics. Brazilwood, back then known as its Asian counterpart sappan wood, came over the silk road from East Asia as early as the 6th century. In the 16th century demand was high and it still was a luxury to get ones hands on it. Bright red always was rare.
And then the Portuguese found what now is known as Brazil (the word brazil means ember and refers to the bright red of the dye) and to their endless joy a whole forest full of Caesalpina trees. The trees were so prominent that they even named the whole country after them. Though the best trees only grew in one specific region, the supply seemed endless and they felled tons of trees and shipped them in huge cargo boats to Europe for their dye houses. Finally they found gold in the form of an (seemingly) endless supply of this stuff.
But by the mid-19th century, everyone was glad that some schmuck developed synthetic dyes from (another seemingly endless resource) because the supply of trees was not as endless as it had seemed.
80 to 100 years to get ember red
It takes a Caesalpina echinata tree about 80 to 100 years to grow enough heartwood in a quality that is needed for dyeing (and to make violin bows from it), and the tree needs a specific environment to grow at all and in the necessary quality. And in the 19th century, lumberjacks had to go deeper and deeper into the forest to find the right trees. So with the advent of synthetic dyes, brazilwood nearly was forgotten. Only violin bow makers still demanded the wood because it seems only this special kind of pernambucco (named after the forest region) is the right kind of wood for the best violin bows.
And then it happened that in the 1970s a revival in natural dyeing arose and all of a sudden a few people wanted to dye their wool with brazilwood again. Those few hippies and early greens were easily supplied with the dust from turning violin bows and other woodworking stuff and it even was cheap material. Even 10 years ago, I only paid about 15 to 20 EUR for a kilogram. And it lasts for ever. You can dye tons of wool with it in shocking red hues. So it became more and more popular. And then CITES proposed to list Caesalpina braisiliensis as an endangered species and was about to prohibit every kind of trade with the wood. It would even have been illegal to cross a border with a 200 year of pernambucco violin bow. So the violinists and bow makers were the first to notice the listing proposal and lobbied against it. In 2007 brazilwood was listed in CITES Appendix II, and is on the IUCN Red List. It is listed as endangered due to a population reduction of over 50% in the past three generations, caused by a decline in its natural range, and exploitation. It took until 2013 to hit the hobby dyers but now they plunged into it head on. And haven't stopped wailing since. What should they use now for shocking red on wool? Is there some surrogate? And when I had a inquiry if I would part with my small stock in brazilwood and the person offered to pay a certain, much lower price than I had paid several years before, it hit me.
The natural dye situation is yet another symptom of the greater problem of too much consumption.
It is all very well that we now demand organic food, organic cotton (very important) and best naturally dyed clothes. But what we don't demand is: buying less. Consuming less.
There is a whole new level of supposedly green consumers growing. Change the world for the better through consuming. But it has to be the correct stuff.
I used to sell dye extracts and there we were the first to notice the rising demand. For example, chlorophyll (a natural dye made from alfalfa dyeing true green) already a very expensive dye, had a price increase of over 150% in one year. At first I thought they had a bad harvest but when I asked the supplier they told me it was due to the increased demand by fashion industry and food industry.
Where does this lead (leave) us?
Brazilwood and Chlorophyll are only the beginning. The more people are getting aware of natural dyes and the wholesomeness of natural living the more the demand will increase. Basically it is not a bad thing. I still advocate dyeing with natural dyes and I still believe it is healthier for us and all the other living beings on this little planet. But I do also believe in reducing consumption. We have to become aware that we live in a world of finiteness. As every beings life is finite so are our resources.
There is no way we can supply naturally dyed organic cotton for all the jeans people want. To grow enough indigo to dye every jeans that is made and sold only in one year would mean that the whole subcontinent of India would consist of nothing else but indigo fields. (And the farmer had to live somewhere else.) This is basically impossible. And to be honest, it makes no sense that only a few wealthy people should be able to afford naturally dyed organic cotton (to stick with the jeans) and the rest may as well use conventionally grown cotton dyed with synthetics.
So if we truly want that dyers in all the poor nations that we use as our workshops and dumps should be able to live on and by their land again, should be able to drink their water and still be able to get their income from dyeing fabrics, and if we truly want that cotton does not pollute the land it grows on any longer, we need to learn to rethink how to use clothes, rethink how fashion should work and we need to learn to see differently.
A proposal
Like all social beings living by daylight we love bright colours. It is something atavistic in us. Bright colours signal willingness to mate, warn us of dangerous and or toxic situations and beings, they attract insects and so on. But the advent of synthetic dyes brought us an oversupply in bright colours and like synthetic aromas our eyes and taste buds (and sometimes I think even our ears) are blunted by all the shocking pinks and reds and neon greens and yellows and bright blues. Bright primary colours predominate fashion and everything else. So all people can think of is demanding the same colour range in natural dyes. Turning to natural colours in all their subtlety, in all their variety and in all the ranges they exist would be like having eaten hot Mexican food for your whole life and now turning to rural basic Japanese kitchen. You might want tons of wasabi to taste anything at all.
Those of us who propose, teach and use natural dyes maybe should be teachers in a old but new way of seeing as well. And maybe we could learn and teach to savour special colours as well.
How about colours of one
continent?India Flint shows us the colours of Australia but what are the colours of Europe? Or North America?
One country? How does Germany look in colours? Or Britain? France? Georgia? Washington State?
Or even local colours?
Your neighbourhood?
Beginning in your own backyard and moving outward, meandering, in circles or at random?
Learning to get to know the colours we have at our hands. Learning that some colours really are something special. That bright red is a luxury.
I will honour and savour
what little brazilwood I have left and dye some silk embroidery
thread with it. Maybe some wool thread as well and use it sparsely
being aware of the luxury it is. And later today I will have a look at the
railway line, I think I've seen some sumac growing. (After I made some apricot jam from apricots in my MIL's garden.)