Recette de teinture à l'écorce de bauhinie

Bauhinia Bark Dye Recipe

The bauhinia (“hoa ban” in Vietnamese) is a shrub that flowers in March.

This Sunday, June 5, was World Environment Day. This year, in 2022, it was also the launch day of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Created at the initiative of the United Nations, this event aims to raise awareness among the various actors in society (governments, businesses, civil society, schools, celebrities, cities and communities) of the many ways to get involved and take action to preserve the environment.

So, we invite you to read on our blog, every week in June, an article highlighting a dye plant and a dye recipe made from it. And yes, it is thanks to the preservation of flora that we can appreciate the beauty of plant dyes!

Dyeing is, like weaving, an ancestral know-how. Faced with the considerable ecological footprint of man, the transmission of plant dye recipes is a way of working for the preservation of threatened ecosystems. Indeed, weavers from ethnic minorities in Southeast Asia plant and cultivate plant species, which helps restore the local flora. In particular, they have reintroduced the cultivation of brown cotton, which had long since disappeared, in the heart of the local landscape of Dien Bien Phu, a province located in the north of Vietnam. The sustainable cultivation of land around the cooperatives is therefore a way of acting on a daily basis to promote biodiversity.

At Opportunity for Women, we are aware that our business relies on the good health of the environment in which our weaving cooperatives operate. This is why our collections are produced in small quantities and using organic cotton, so as not to deplete the soil or pollute it with toxic pesticides. As for the dye plants, they are carefully collected with respect for biodiversity and used according to a resource-saving principle.

In this first article in our series on “the secrets of natural dyes”, we present a dye recipe made from bauhinia bark, a shrub that grows in tropical regions and produces pretty clusters of white or pink flowers. Moreover, this recipe allows you to dye threads or natural fabrics in a brown that tends towards pink. Let yourself be guided, step by step, by our recipe and discover in pictures the weavers of the Dien Bien Phu cooperative . They also got their hands dirty with dyeing! They were able to develop their dyeing expertise during professional training, given by the Vietnamese Thao Vu, a specialist in plant dyeing.

Lao weavers on their way to the rainforest.

Let's go for the dyeing! For this recipe, the dyers need bauhinia bark, which they go to harvest in the middle of the Vietnamese equatorial forest. Did you know that there are more than two hundred and fifty species of bauhinia in the world? The magnificent flowers of the bauhinia only bloom in Vietnam in March, tinting forests and mountains with pink. This tree is very popular because, in addition to its beauty, it has many benefits and can be used for culinary or medicinal purposes as well as dyeing. Indeed, its gray bark is naturally rich in tannin, a transparent or coloring substance contained in plants and which, combined with a mordant, helps to fix the dye to cellulosic fibers, such as cotton.

To mordant the fibres, weavers use raw aluminium ore: it does not contain the toxic substances and impurities contained in refined alum; used sparingly, it is therefore less dangerous for the environment and health. In addition, it is essential to guarantee the fastness or resistance to light of the colours applied to textiles.

Dyeing textiles also requires cream of tartar, a natural ingredient that is commonly used in cooking, especially for making meringues! It is an acidic white powder that comes from the deposits generated by the wine-making process.

Finally, the water used for dyeing is drawn from near the cooperative. It is an alkaline water naturally rich in iron, which has a certain influence on the shades obtained in dyeing. The ideal pH for dyeing being 7, a little vinegar is sometimes added to acidify the dye bath.

Pom leans on the trunk of the bauhinia to cut the bark with his machete.

She carries on her back a traditional woven basket made of bamboo and cotton.

Back at the cooperative, the weavers cut the bark into smaller pieces.

Dyeing is a team effort.

After boiling the pieces of bauhinia bark and the cream of tartar in water for 30 to 45 minutes, the mixture is filtered to keep only the coloring solution.

The textiles are first washed with ash lye.

They soak in a bath at 60°C for 45 minutes to an hour.

This type of detergent, used since ancient times, is made from the ashes of fruit wood or ferns from the hearth of homes.

Washing removes impurities from the cotton, making it whiter and more supple.

The fibers are rinsed in cold water: the thermal shock promotes the future absorption of the dye.

The threads and fabrics are then hot or cold dyed.

Dyers can produce all sorts of shades of color, which vary depending on

on the temperature of the bath and the number of times the dyeing process is repeated.

Vi Thi Tich dips the washed and wrung-out white cotton fabric into the hot dye bath, using a bamboo stick.

The temperature is gradually raised over 45 minutes until it reaches 60°C.

To cold dye, the craftswomen immerse the fabrics in a basin containing the rest of the coloring solution,

then let them soak for at least an hour and up to overnight to obtain deep tones.

Leave the textiles to rest for a while before rinsing them gently in clean water.

The threads and fabrics are then left to dry.

They are placed away from sunlight, in order to preserve their flexibility and shine.

Their color is a pretty pink tending towards brown.

What a joy, after more than a year of work and COVID hazards,

to see the weavers in this weaving program undergo complete training in vegetable dyeing!

The Dien Bien Phu weaving cooperative was structured in partnership with the NGO Entrepreneurs du Monde . We managed to set it up thanks to funding from the Agir Sa Vie foundation, but we are still missing some of the funds. Even a small gesture can help these women live off their passion and pass on this precious know-how to younger generations! Thanks to you, they will also be able to improve their cotton spinning and weaving techniques.

Want to know more about World Environment Day and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration? Check out these links!

Thanks to Quynh Anh for her contribution to transcribing this recipe!

Keywords : biodiversity, dye, color, environment, dye, natural dye, vegetable dye, textile, eco-responsible, ecosystem

Back to blog