Time Travel with Colour

The thing that stays with me about Virginia Woolf’s time travelling novel “Orlando” was how the scents in history were different in each era . When I first became interested in natural dyes one of the most revelatory aspects of it was the notion that colour is also different in time. This is because up until 1856 with the discovery by an 18 year old English chemist called William Henry Perkins who was attempting to make quinine, a treatment for malaria from coal tar, he instead created a mysterious purple sludge. Rather than throwing it away he tested it on silk and it produced a brilliant mauve colour. He named it mauveine and it became very fashionable and was worn by Queen Victoria herself.

So this chemical accident began a whole new age of dyes that were synthetically produced. They were cheaper, more stable and were suitable for mass production. These dyes are what we see and wear mostly .

The traditional dyes obtained from natural sources like minerals, plants and crushed insects are the ones we can still see if we go to a gallery and look at paintings and tapestries. Or if we are lucky enough to see cave paintings made with ochres from minerals that span millions of years.

It is a kind of time travel , to look at colour with historical eyes.

One of the magical parts of using natural dyes is that the colour molecules are made up of multiple colour components. Indigo contains not just one molecule but a group of compounds that interact with light in subtle ways, giving it depth and variation in hue. Weather conditions, soil and harvest time can also influence the dyes. To me this makes them more dynamic and nuanced.

So next time you see an old painting have a closer look at the colour and look at it through an historical lens.

Making Pot Pourri Fashionable Again

I spent part of my childhood living in an old water mill. It was close to a village in Suffolk (UK) called Cavendish and famous for it’s marshmallow pink thatched cottages.

Cavendish had a handful of shops and one of them was called “Full of Beans”. It was in a small room in a Georgian house on the main street. Simply decked out with wooden furniture and very homespun, the shop contained drawers of dried beans, lentils and herbs. When you entered you were met with wholesome herbaceous woody scents. My ten year old self was enthralled. It made me want to go out pick and dry flowers and leaves and make my own concoctions. Boarding school and college aside I never really stopped doing this.

It is a way of storing up layers of plant material from each growing season. The scent of summer released with a gentle zhoosh .

The origins of pot pourri go back a long way. In sixteenth century Spain, pot pourri was known as olla podrida , which means rotten pot (!) to describe a stew of meat and vegetables. Scent was needed to chase away unpleasant smells and pestilence. Usually stored in containers with holes to release the perfume. Layers of petals, leaves, bay (sea) salt and orris root to preserve the scent.

My modern day version includes dried plant material, orris root , salt and the addition of essential oils . I like to display the mix in a bowl so that you can see the shapes and colours of the flowers. I add drops of essential oil as the scent begins to fade .

I love that it can be added to. I’ll pick a few fallen iris petals or the last tulip flower that I can’t quite bring myself to put into the compost. Here it can remain awhile as the year progresses, a little memento of the spring.