dyeing with mother nature…
2009.06.01 14:12
Dying to try out some do-it-yourself dyeing?
Look no further, the plants and trees around us are gifts from nature for the colors of our clothes.
And local plants and trees were indeed where 50-year-old Sancaya Rini looked to when she tried to figure out a way to color her batik scarves without polluting the ground with hazardous substances from synthetic dyes.
From leaves of her mango tree, the outer shells of native Jakarta’s stinking bean jengkol, to the skins of the rambutan fruit –all are actually elements of Mother Nature’s palette that most of us overlook as we become too indulged with synthetic dyes.
Rini took a wide silk scarf, soaked it a little under the tap, and then dipped it several times into a bucket of yellowish-brown water which contained mahogany bark concentrate and voila! a scarf in a light-brown shade that does not wear out is ready to hang dry under the sun.
In a country rich with traditional textile with roots originating from eras when synthetic coloring was not available, it is very unfortunate that the art of natural dyeing is dying. It was not until recently that people started to look for natural alternatives of artificial dyes that has increasingly pollute ground water.
According to Batik Info, around 400 batik workshops in Pekalongan, Central Java discharge each day some 50,000 cubic-meters of waste water contaminated with synthetic dyes which are non-biodegradable. Rodhamine B, a main chemical substance in synthetic dye, is a threat to both the natural ecosystem and human health as it is deemed carcinogenic.
As the investment needed to build waste water processing plants are expensive, researchers are campaigning for the use of natural dyes which could be produced from various plants available in our surroundings.
“See these peels of secang tree (Caesalpinia sappan)? It can produce a rich variety of colors, depending on what we mix it with,” Rini said, pointing to silk scarves dyed from bright magenta to soft salmon pink.
For small workshops like that of Rini’s, it is quite easy to switch to natural dyeing.
“I order shells of jengkol from the vegetable vendor in the market, and simply pick leaves from trees in my backyard,” she said.
A kilogram of mango leaves, for example, is then boiled with 10 liters of water until the color seeps in. The mixture is used to dip and soak textiles once or several times until one gets the desired hue.
“Natural dyes work best with natural textiles. That’s the way nature works,” Rini highlighted.
“From batik I learn about patience and from natural dyeing I learn that human can plan, but nature decides,” the 50-year-old mother of four said. “I can plan to dye a fabric yellow, for example. But, I could never obtain the exact color that I want twice. There’s a limit to what we humans have a say.”
In these days when everyone wants everything in an instant and mass production methods have disregarded anything natural for the sake of increasing production, Rini is indeed swimming against the current.
And there is always an element of surprise in the work of nature. One process, one dip would have different results from the other, she added. As an antidote of mass-produced textile, the one-of-a-kind nature of naturally dyed fabric has an exclusive quality. No piece is like the other.
And one can experiment with whatever material found in nature.
Natural dyes –coloring obtained from chlorophyll, carotenoid, flavonoid and quinon– can be categorized into four types, ranging from those whose color would easily wear out such as curcumin, to those whose color would come out stronger with time such as alizarin and moridin. By soaking textile into mordant substances, color pigments could be deeper absorbed by the fibres, thus making the quality of color last longer.
The chlorophylls in algae can also be used as natural dye, Semarang’s Diponegoro University researcher Susanto said.
Four types of algae that can be used are Rhodophyceae, Phaephyceae, Chlorophyceae and Cyanophyceae. Alginat produced from brown algae like Sargassum filipendula and Turbinaria can also serve as a textile emulsifier, helping to preserve colorings on textile, BPPT researcher Jana Tjahjana Anggadiredja said, adding that both species contained between 8 to 32 percent alginates.
Mangosteen, a tropical fruit native of South East Asia, is also another source of natural dye. Its shell is a potential source of not only natural dye, but also a raw material that can be processed into cosmetics and vitamins. Bandung’s Padjajaran University researcher Tati Sukarti said that mangosteen shells can be extracted into natural dyes of red, violet and blue.
Meanwhile, Indian redwood (Bixa orellana) is also among species that have been used for natural dyeing. The skin of its seed contained karotenoid pigments bixin and norbixin. It is also safe for food coloring.
The use of natural dyes could help cut costs by 5 to 10 percent, Industry Ministry director for textile and garment SME Joni Tarigan said. Unfortunately, not many have developed natural dyes into easily obtained materials for textile industries in the market.
Before the rise of synthetic dyeing in the mid 19th century, Indonesians and many other communities have actually rely on natural dyes. The oldest known in the country is perhaps indigo leaves, known locally as tarum or tom.
Currently, batik foundation Sekar Jagad is promoting the use of indigo in craftsmen village of Imogiri. “The market potential of naturally dyed batik is huge. And it is a way of also being more environmentally friendly,” Sekar Jagad activist Suliantoro said.
The jeans that we know today, used to be dyed with indigo. The plant itself has been used in Java since the 5th century, historian Awaludin Nugraha wrote.
During the Dutch colonials, extract of the plants became an international commodity that indigo plantations were made part of the cultuur stelsel priority, especially in Central Java’s Bagelen and West Java’s Cirebon, Majalengka and Kuningan regencies.
During its golden period, there were more than 7,000 hectares of indigo plantations in Cirebon, the second largest production center in Java, processed in 235 factories, Nugraha revealed. The number had more than doubled from the beginning of mass indigo cultivation in the early 1830s. The area contributed to almost a quarter of total production from the island.
Seven years later, indigo production started to decline as plantations were then focused for rice cultivation, a commodity whose price was increasingly rising in the international market. In 1864, indigo production was stopped completely. And thus the decline of natural dyeing.
Living in a country with a wealth of natural biodiversity is indeed a blessing. If one only cares to look, that is.
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Sources of natural dye
- Arnato tree (Bixa orellana) for yellow to orange shades
- Indian red wood (Caesalpinia sappan) for magenta to pinkish colors
- Tea (Camellia sinensis) for yellowish shades
- Soga (Ceriops tagal) for dark brownish hues
- Indian albizia (Albizzia lebbekoides) for yellowish to light brown colors
- Jengkol (Archidendron jiringa) for orange colors
- Sugar palm (Arenga pinnata) for warm brown shades
- Indigo (Indigofera arrecta) for bright blue to dark blue
- Mango (Mangifera indica) for varied shades of green
- Yellow flame (Peltophorum pterocarpum) for shades of browns
- Mahagony (Swietenia mahagoni) for reddish browns
(Source: Prosea and Kehati)
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