Handmade History, Episode 6: Tie Dye

Show Notes

What is tie dye?

A form of resist dyeing
Material is gathered, scrunched, twisted, or wrapped around something and secured with some sort of tie–you can use rubber bands, twine or string, and you can also use a needle and thread
You can also clamp parts of the material between wooden blocks
Then dipped into dye.
The ties or clamps, along with the folds and gathers, prevent dye from soaking into a portion of the material, so that the material is left its natural color.
You can create stripes, dots, spirals, circles, fish eyes, squares, and many other effects. The edges of the undyed portions may be softer or sharper depending on the technique
A closely related resist dyeing technique is called ikat, and that is when you tie-dye threads before they are woven. We’ll include some cool examples of that today.
There are other forms of resist dyeing, like batik, where you drip wax onto the fabric in a design, then dye the fabric, then remove the wax.

Quote: “The techniques of tie and dye have been practiced at some time in history by almost every country in the world.”

This is by no means a comprehensive list; there are many others. I chose the ones that were notable, interesting, widely spread or just more researched. There are lots and lots of traditions of this craft

Asia

“The practice of shibori seems to be an instinctive human activity that has arisen spontaneously in many different cultures” - Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada

Quick note: We are using “shibori” as an umbrella term more or less interchangeable with tie dye, but in Japan, it was originally a technical term for a specific type of tie dye technique (which we’ll get to)

Shibori

Shibori is super popular today
Often see it dyed with indigo on white fabric
Can be done with various different kinds of ties, including stitching
Can also be done with folding/clamping
And also with wax resist techniques
Originated in China

Oldest examples come from the 300s CE in China
Early example found in a tomb near the Silk Road in a place that was historically called Western Liang

A piece of spotted fabric
Dates to 418 CE

Banned by the Song dynasty from 960-1279 CE because it was seen as “extravagant”
Still done by people in China today, including the Bai people who live in the Yunnan province of SW China
Also done by Miao and Pei groups
Called Zha-ran
Can tie fabric around rice, tiny pieces of metal
Complicated stitching patterns, including using cross stitch or overcast stitch
Saw one example that looked like a flower with different petals, some dyed and some not, another looked like a butterfly
Done on cotton, linen, or silk
Often use indigo or ochre (dark yellow) natural dyes
The practice of Zha-ran is on the China National Intangible Cultural Heritage list

One theory is that the practice here originated when these groups of people arrived from Southeast Asia

Japan

Shibori is most well known today in the US as being a practice from Japan
This is by no means a complete history, more like fun facts
Earliest examples of shibori in Japan came from the 700s
Became the most popular pattern-dyeing technique of the 1600s

Different types of tie dye techniques, including kanoko or kanoko shibori (tiny bits of fabric wrapped around silver nails), shibori (larger areas of tie dye), boshi-shibori (patterns stitched with thread–made sharper outlines)

Peasants would dye hemp
Upper classes would dye silk for kimonos
Shibori dyed kimonos were a symbol of wealth
Did not just use blue–also red and other colors, like ochre and beige
Combined with other techniques in kimonos, like embroidery
Sumptuary laws were passed in 1683 banning shibori techniques on kimonos
Designs were still popular and people stenciled them instead
Sumptuary laws were lifted in 1868

Mongolia/Himalayas

Tie-dyed wool fabrics and felt rugs
Imported into Japan from Mongolia

Southeast Asia

Indonesia

Royals in Indonesian islands imported ikat fabrics from India called Patola from Patan in Western India
Began to make their own, including two types called kembangan and teritik

India

Bhandani
Bhanda = “to tie” in Sanskrit
Use a fingernail or metal ring with a point to make tiny gathers - similar to kanoko shibori technique
Reveals tiny white dots
Can also make whirls
Simple method/difficult to master
Oldest known form of tie dye: at least 4000 years old
Done by the Indus Valley civilization
Curator said that: earliest examples we have are “perfection,” implying the technique is a lot older (these aren’t sloppy first tries at tie-dyeing)

Images found on the Ajanta Cave in Central India in a painting depicting the life of Buddha
Courtiers and courtesans are shown wearing bodices speckled with dots and wraps that appear to be ikat fabric (where the threads are tie-dyed before they are woven)
Mentioned in songs and poetry as symbols of love and affection

Still done today
On cotton, wool, silk
Another type of tie dye: laharia = “to wave”
Fabric is rolled diagonally and tied, then dyed in several different dye baths to make parallel diagonal lines and plaids
Can also make zig-zags

The origins of the American bandanna

Did you notice that bhandani is similar to a word we have in English, bandanna?
That’s because they are connected!
In the late 1720s, the English East India Company began to order and import bandannas, which were silk handkerchiefs that were either tie-dyed or printed
Came from Bengal, which is now the state of West Bengal in India plus the country of Bangladesh
By the early 1800s, 800,000 to 1 million were imported and sold annually in England
English manufacturers imitated the technique using resist printing methods with wax or paste. They also used clamp resist methods with carved wooden boards
In Manchester, England, they began to print them
They are still printed today.

Africa

Note: all the Asian instances of tie-dye seem to be possibly connected: inspired each other, migrated between countries

Tie dye seems to have spontaneously evolved also in Africa

In other words, there is no evidence that the tie-dye techniques done in countries in Africa evolved from those done in Asia, or vice versa, until the modern era

West African countries

Adire = “to take, to tie & dye”
Yoruba people in Nigeria, Ghana, Dahomey, and other West African countries practice tie-dye
Adire Eleso = tied or sewn fabric
Adire Eleko = resist dyeing using cassava paste
Use cotton and raffia threads
Tie fabric around grains of corn, making tiny circles, or around pebbles
Also tuck material, fold fabric around the tuck, and whipstitch it
Makes “exquisite designs”
Used indigo and rust-colored dye from kola nuts, camwood, and other dyes
Designs tied to individual identity, show age or rank in society

DRC

In DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) in central Africa, people tie dye raffia cloth
Raffia cloth is woven from fibers from palm leaves

The Americas

South America:

Amarra
Amarras = “ties” in Spanish
Done in the Andes and in Mesoamerica (encompasses Mexico and parts of Central America), Peru, other parts of South America, Central America
Alicia read a survey of 20 pieces found in Chile dyed with amarras.
Some were made using ikat
Included designs with lines, circles, four-sided figures
Preserved because the Atacama, in the northern part of Chile, is a desert
These covered 2700 years of this craft
Earliest was from 1500 BCE

Wraps (yarn) that had been tie-dyed used to decorate a mummy’s turban

Another example was a belt, which was gathered threads which had been tie-dyed

Red, blue, yellow
900-1200 CE

Also tunics and ponchos found

Poncho with a horizontal white stripe, bright red dye (“intense red”) - 800-1000 CE
Tunic with a serpentlike figure (done using another technique) decorated with squares with dots in the center - tie dyed

Red & blue
600 CE

Other fragments found in white, blue, red, green, and yellow ochre

Aztecs/Mexico and surrounding area

Tie-dyed capes appear in written records and drawings depicting pre-Colombian society
Appear in Spanish records of these people
Researcher Patricia Rieff Anawalt did an analysis of the Nahuatl words used for these capes
Nahuatl was the language that Aztec people spoke at the time of the conquistadors and it is still spoken today by indigenous people
Interesting paper because it shows how research can be done when it’s difficult or impossible to find fragments of fabric, which biodegrades so easily
She was studying a record written by a Spanish friar, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún

Sahagún was a missionary, but he learned Nahuatl and recorded a lot about the people of “New Spain” aka Mexico and surrounding area
Employed indigenous artists to illustrate it

This study did not rely on Sahagún’s description of the cloaks
The researcher “...these sources…are meticulous and careful only regarding categories of phenomena that they considered to be important”
“Details of clothing and of the technology of weaving were of less significance to the friar and hence his Spanish paraphrasing was correspondingly careless”

Also he might not have the textile knowhow to spot the difference

Luckily illustrators cared a lot about these cloaks and drew them in painstaking detail
Blue-knotted capes

xiuhtlalpilli tilmati in Nahuatl
Refers to the tie-dying process
Worn by gods and rulers in images
Hernan Cortez received one
Warriors received them after capturing someone in battle
Given as gifts
Dyed using technique similar to a shibori technique called “yokobiki kanoko”, which means square ring dot
That is what the pattern looks like
You can see it clearly in the illustrations that the local people, Aztecs, made
This is an example of a naming convention = “technology naming”, where you name the fabric after the way that it’s made
Another example: ixnextlacuilolli = painted cloak

By talking with native speakers of Nahuatl, researcher able to parse this:
Ix = on the surface
Nex = ash, used as ink
Tlacuilolli = writing or painting

Tie dyed threads (ikat) = netlalpilli ixtlapaltitlmatli
Can figure out from names of fabrics or cloaks, which were recorded in writings, how people dyed the cloth

Ex: tzitzica = “to stuff tightly into a container”, refers to a method where the fabric is rolled and knotted firmly and dyed in indigo, unrolled to make stripes

USA

Originally became popular in the the early 1900s
Article in The Craftsman, which was a magazine of the Arts & Crafts movement, by Charles Pellew
The Arts & Crafts movement had “a reverence for handiwork”
Another article was in Harper’s Bazaar, by the founder of the Campfire girls, Adelia B. Beard

Largely treated tie dye as magical and intuitive instead of a highly developed and honed art form

RIT dye, invented in 1916, helped popularize tie dye, made it possible to do at home
Embraced and emblematic of the hippie movement in the 60s and 70s
Resurgence during…the pandemic!

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Sources:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/beloved-yet-banned-the-surprising-history-of-tie-dye

https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/tie-dye-history-in-images

https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/fit-to-be-dyed/

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/02/health/tie-dye-craft-hobby-quarantine-wellness/index.html

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/what-is-shibori

https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.18672021