Making Dyes With Mushrooms

David Trammel's picture

I didn't know you could do this.

The History and Art of Mushrooms for Color

Nice to know and would be fun to try if you were a fiber worker.

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David Trammel's picture

A friend and I used to spend a lot of time dying with natural materials, especially woad which is a noxious weed here in norther Utah. We were both in the SCA at the time and did a fair amount of research on how cloth was dyed in the middle ages. If I remember correctly tin was a more modern mordant and out of our area of study, but alum and iron were both used during the middle ages. Iron pots can be used to provide the iron mordant or rusted iron bits and I believe that wars were fought for the alum mordant since dyed fabrics were such a profitable business, especially in Italy.

It was a fascinating study and naturally we made many dying experiments with plant materials that would have been available in the middle ages. I knew about lichens, but not mushrooms.

Sweet Tatorman's picture

I was processing some fruit of Malabar Spinach today for the purpose of seed saving and thought of this thread. The juice from the fruit is intensely purple even if diluted 100:1. I have often wondered if a suitable mordant exists to make it color fast on fabrics. My favorite book on seed saving says that in India it is used as a food coloring as well as a coloring agent in cosmetics. I have read elsewhere that in colonial India it was used as the ink pad ink for the rubberstamps of the colonial bureaucracy.

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That is a beautiful color. You can try all the standard mordants, alum, iron, tin, chrome. I would consult a book on natural dyes first before proceeding. The safest and easiest to use are alum and iron. Treat the fiber first with the mordant then put them into the dye bath. Unfortunately, most dyes from fruit are fugitive and don't keep the beautiful color that you took the picture of. There are some exceptions, so give it a try and see what you get. It is possible that this fruit won't need a mordant and will stay that beautiful color. Let us know how it goes.

Sweet Tatorman's picture

I won't be trying it as I am not a dyer and I am not looking for another pastime. If someone else here wishes to try it I would be happy to ship a sample of the extract at my expense. If it were to be this year it would need to be right away as I plant to till all of this season's crop residue this Friday which will include the Malabar Spinach.