1000 Botanical Colors: Make Your Own Dyes, Paints, Inks, Stains, and Pottery Paints from 250 Plants

Before this fantastic offering, I had no idea what a mordant might be. Or a glass muller. Briefly, mordants make colors more resistant to fading from light or washing and vary the color yields from plants. A process involving gently slurrying a bit of botanical between a glass weight and a flat slab of the same material, a glass muller, mulls paint from flowers, herbs, leaves, and seeds.

The author has years of teaching and experimenting tucked into this invaluable work. Subjects potentially forbidding, such as creating mordants, turn into comfy home projects.|| There is infinite detail, delivered in fine clarity of language, with some nice humor.

Paints, inks, dyes, stains, delving into everything from tie-dying to fabric selection to explorations, with safety precautions for adults and kids, proliferate. A wealth of sharing!!||Starting on page 115, plants are introduced by their Linnaean name, then, in Bold, their English one, with a very clear 3×2 photo. Listed are: parts for pigment, type (shrub, tree), hardiness zone, and whether it’s annual or perennial. Then a step-by-step procedure with commentary. Prominent are broad color swatches noting mordants/methods used to produce each.

Interested in natural color? Here is kindly guidance delivered by a master craftsman.