Workshop description and meet the tutor: India Flint...On this page: Photo record of 5 day workshop in Waiuku New Zealand March 7-11th 2010, hosted by Marion Hera-Gorr on Judy Bischoff's beautiful organic propertyWaitangi Farm, which is situated at 157 Morely Rd Waiuku. This workshop was a new adventure for Beautiful Silks. In 2011 we are repeating a similar experience but it is limted to 10 people and fully residential. Also we are moving the workshop venue into the tractor shed - which has more space.

- WORKSHOP 'Wandering Fields and forests' -

India tells us her vision:

Every plant gives some kind of colour, depending on how it is processed. This class will embrace a number of methods for colour extraction as well as protocols for plant collection and plant identification. Participants will explore country through writing, drawing, stitch and dye; taking mindful windfall walks, mapping marks, observing and responding to the essence of the land. During the week we will dye silk and wool, using windfall leaves from the fields and forests and construct a series of small leaf-illustrated textile notebooks that will be both maps of the journey taken and documents recording the week’s explorations. We will work with plant dyes, stitch, paper and cloth.

Marion Comments: Waitangi Farm

Has always been a haven of peace and beauty for me over many years. Judy Bischoff has farmed all her life. She sees the land in it's totality, the birds high on the old trees, the weeds which must be carefully managed because they provide shelter and microclimates which allow things to happen. The pheasants and peacocks which nest there and roam. Judy's hard work of the past 25 years shows in the walnut and chestnut groves, the mature apple orchard, the fields which appear lush beside the neighbouring properties. She raises organic beef and also has a couple of managed flocks of hens. I perceive that Judy has a long and slow vision on the land.

You may be aquainted with the work of the accomplished India Flint, if not please see her website here.

Complex Cloth is the laying stitching and eco dyeing of different types of cloth, then treating these in the same way to get different colours: You can stitch new and old or both together, to create a wealth of useable beauty from things once useless.

The ecoprint is a water-based printing process used to apply colour to cloth from plants. It uses relatively small quantities of plant material in a recycled dye-bath and requires no adjunct mordants when protein fibres such as silk or wool are used. Dyes from plants are a renewable resource, whereas synthetic dyes derived from petrochemicals or fossil sources such as coal, are not. Plant dye-making links art and science, historically embracing botany and medicine as well as an appreciation of chemistry.

Photo: India Flint

Literally every plant in the world will have some sort of colour to offer the dyer. There are at least as many subtly different hues as there are plant species in the world, and an infinite range of colours and shades to be had.

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