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Indigo Shade Map is thrilled to share the story behind Inside Indigo through a special interview with Julia Tabakhova. We hope you enjoy this brilliant book and the insights it offers!

Please find Julia’s indigo cultivation story in Calvados, Normandy, France, in our latest On the Map Series post here.


A cover page of the Inside Indigo
A cover page of the Inside Indigo

WHY I CREATED IT 

Indigo predates science and therefore cannot be solely studied under this lens.

For INSIDE INDIGO, I wanted science and poetry to coexist, to explore indigo chemistry and plant biology outside the lab, but with scientific rigor, intertwined with wonderment intrinsic to anything magic & scientific.

There has long been a need in the indigo world for visualisations detailing the chemistry involved behind the techniques of vat making, extraction, fresh leaf and so on. The scientific documentation on indigo has existed within the field of chemists and scientists for 142 years, but sparingly among dyers.

Once the understanding of organic chemistry and plant biology becomes second nature, it gives you a new metric to explore and experiment around indigo from a different vantage point.

To make those visualisations effective, I preferred drawings to photographs because they are more helpful in illustrating the steps in the different phases. Symbols have been used throughout time as a way to supersede barriers in language. 

The tools and precision involved in making these hand drawn illustrations make the process a close relative to the traditional Japanese wood block technique and gives an analogue feel to the book, something to keep the reader immersed into the real world of indigo. This was an intuitive decision as a metaphor for the merit of working by hand.

The friendly colourful drawing style is a backdrop to a more serious and science based content applied to various recipes in a side by side column to the left hand pages. INSIDE INDIGO explores indigo chemistry with an iconography designed for the dyers in order to make it palatable, to grasp key concepts and make the indigo science experience for the reader fun and accessible through first hand recipes and hands on experiments.

I intentionally made the drawings evolve through a visual arc to ease into the complexity, starting with whimsical molecules at the beginning, then morphing slowly into their accurate carbon ring anatomy on the very last pages to tag along the learning curve of the reader.


HOW  I CREATED IT 

INSIDE INDIGO started as a place to put things, ideas and drawings, one molecule at a time. To articulate the invisible, give a new face to the standardised reaction schemes. And experiment around these visuals. Bridging the boundaries between science and the dye world. Trying to translate these levels of complexity and scientific convention into palatable concepts for the neophyte. To make accessible what the scientific community has studied and drawn through reaction schemes and short hands that fall under pre-established scientific convention, sometimes hard to grasp.

By definition, experimenting means going to territory where you've never been, where failure is very possible. I was terrified and went through self doubt  a million times. Indigo binds to other molecules but it also binds people’s hearts, and the support my close-knit indigo community and friends* provided me during these last 3 years made this book possible. 


All in all, 3 years of work, 2 years of readings, researching, studying, experimenting, refining, percolating, distillating, sedimenting and decanting this pigment of indigo knowledge. The third year was the hardest: at full speed, the book made itself between my hands. Hand-drawing, digitalizating, and finally organizing the pages in order to make indigo chemistry easy.

More often than not, it felt as if the book was asking for certain pages more than the other way around. It was an urge, a calling, I never experienced this level of frenzy and manic inspiration to this magnitude with my previous projects.

This book marks a scientific footnote in my long examination of indigo for almost ten years. If you've been following me for a while, you know how much time I've committed to experimenting and researching around indigo and indirubin.

In a nutshell INSIDE INDIGO is Science Meets Fun! A devotion to indigo at the service of the blue community 💙


Details of the Inside Indigo
Details of the Inside Indigo

*Foot notes: This book could not exist without my peers. Just to name a few phenomenal contributors to the knowledge on indigo featured in the book and in the bibliographie and references:

Tim McLaughlin and Charllotte Kwon from @maiwaschooloftextiles 

Britt Boles from @seaspellfiber 

Liz Spencer from @thedogwooddyer 

George Fukuda @bailiwickblue 

Iris Sullivan Daire from @dreambird.studio 

John Marshall “Salvation through Soy“

Dominique Cardon “Le Monde des Teintures Naturelles”

Dorothy Miller “From Seed to Dye”

Seiko Akiyama “The dye Plant of Awa”

J.N.Liles “the art and Craft of Natural Dyeing”

Catharine Ellis & Joy Bouteup “The Art and Science of Natural Dyes”

Michel Garcia “Beyond Mordant”

 
 

Happy April!


Spring has officially arrived! 2024 started off a bit slower for our On the Map Blog Series, as much of Indigo Shade Map’s energy was devoted to developing our newly updated online map in collaboration with the special exhibition Blue Gold: The Art and Science of Indigo at the Mingei International Museum. The exhibition wrapped up beautifully on March 16, and we hope you had a chance to explore its rich perspectives on indigo. Thank you for your patience with Indigo Shade Map’s irregular schedule and sometimes slow pace — this one-person digital platform is a labor of love, and I truly appreciate your continued support.


Now, Indigo Shade Map is back on track, returning to our regular rhythm of sharing stories and practices around indigo and sustainable art from practitioners, artists, and hobbyists around the world.


In honor of Earth Month, we’re excited to begin our 2025 series with a beautiful story from Julia Tabakhova, based in Calvados, Normandy, France.


  1. Location & Environment 


I live in Normandy, Calvados, the land of the apple trees. It’s a 40 minutes ride from the sea, La Manche. I am located in the outskirts of the city of Caen, in the countryside. My tiny house is nestled on a hill surrounded by forests and bocages. 

A small wood of oak and chestnuts borders the side of my garden, a woodland fading into a meadow medium sized parcel, a one person task, that I let grow and help rewild. Punctually, I would transplant local and historical rustic plant species to recreate a traditional habitat for insects and critters, to assist and encourage biodiversity. Rewilding the terrain has become one of my goals. I haven’t cut my grass in 5 years now and it’s a glorious wasteland, a sanctuary for wildlife.


I also planted tinctorial, medicinal and fruit trees to have diversity and autonomy in my homestead. I truly started my dye garden one year after I moved in, to gently observe the passage of time, the shadowy areas and sunny spots through the seasons and map out the different micro zones, to get acquainted with more fresh pockets, or dried up  patches. I decided to design a dedicated space, value small-scale, local solutions that meet the needs of a particular place and down sized to a one person capacity. My nugget-garden is paved with opus limestone and hosts hugelkultur raised beds inspired from biomorphic shapes enclosed by terracotta tiles. 6 oval shapes in total in the middle of each nitrogen rich plants will bring a slow nitrogen release and provide partial shade. With permaculture* in mind I started to weave and take into account wind direction, the dance of the sun and its shadows throughout the seasons, the humidity brought by the wood and the very specific type of soil generated by the rich blanket of leaves. This natural cover creates a mulch that I use as a compost and a soil enrichment. And that’s how I am gradually becoming a bio regionalist, perpetually learning from the land, a herbal folklorist, writer, dyer and land steward.


 All photos were submitted by Julia Tabakhova
 All photos were submitted by Julia Tabakhova

2. Indigo Plants & Practice


I start my seedlings in mid march under my greenhouse with 4 varieties of Japanese Indigo (Persicaria Tinctoria): Senbon**, Maruba***, Chijimiba**** and Kojyoko****. After one year I was able to collect seeds and let them cross-pollinate each other. So far Maruba is the variety that is best suited for my climate, it blossoms and matures before the first frost here, right behind is Kojyoko and Chijimiba, Senbon albeit the last one, is, with Maruba, the variety that gives the highest indigo yield for my area. I let them hybridise with each other.


My end goal is to have Persicaria acclimated to my region. I also grow Woad (Isatis Tinctoria) that I sourced from a historical seed bank organisation here in Normandy. It's an historical one that has been registered and preserved, imported from China as far as the 10th century. It goes by many other names here: “Wouède”, “Guède” and “Pastel des Teinturières”. Even the second year woad yields quite a good amount of indigo. Among my raised beds I opted for a rotation crop between different dye plants and - indigo bearing plants - notorious for sucking up a lot of soil nutrients, the latter always leaving behind a poorer soil - typically suited for Cosmos. Following Permaculture principles I don’t grow plants, I grow soil, therefore - all year long - I create and enrich my different keyholes, strategically placed to sustain a carbon rich source and all the biomass and minerals necessary for a healthy substrate. The round shapes of my nugget-shaped beds marry aesthetics with function, when watering - the arc of the watering can mimic the rounded shape and the terracotta tiles remain fresh to the touch allowing self regulation. At the end of the season I leave the roots of my plants in place and as it decays, it is supporting wildlife and acts as a cover-crop to avoid erosion. All in all it increases efficiency and invites a circular practice. I sing, dance and play with my plants, especially in the nursery of the greenhouse.


I love to use C tones instruments (Kalimba, Marimba, bronze bell, humming) that’s the same note (DO) as a beehive and are known to have a regenerative frequency at the cellular level. Touching and saying hello and good night to them is part of my daily routine. Saying thank you after harvesting and showing them their indigo pigment too !! I see my plants as sentient beings, friends and allies and I thrive in fostering this interspecies communication and friendship. My goal this year is to build a madder* bran vat with my 4 year old madder*, reviving the local tradition of an historical vat of this region. This would be a perfect example of circularity as well since the alkali water goes back to the madder* roots once the vat is exhausted. Incorporating these practices in a symbiotic way is a quest. I grow and process my own flax and nettle as well from seed to weave, dyed in indigo too. Nothing goes to waste during this process, nettle leaves are used as nitrogen-rich manure for my indigo bearing plants. I grow them directly among my nugget-garden, their roots aerate the soil and diffuse nitrogen and minerals and can be pulled up so easily.


Nettle -  the perfect companion plant, acts as a nursery for the larvae of the lady bugs and caterpillar of Red Admirable butterfly who feast on aphids. My medicinal and edible plants are also grown among my dye garden, I don’t segregate, rather integrate in the tradition of the “Jardin des simples” made of plessie d’osier (wicker weave), an enclosed elevated garden traditional from my region.



3. Culture & story of the region


Normandy is also the land of the flax. This is the biggest flax producer in Europe, and its registration aims at implementing a Woad sector as well. Historically speaking, woad was already a major crop in the middle age in Normandy, and was extensively grown and cultivated, you can still see half-timbered houses with indigo painted beams. So much so that Guillaume Le Conquérand has his story told in a 230 feet long tapestry made of stylised figures of soldiers and horses embroidered in yarn dyed with woad, madder and weld, finally achieved in 1066, almost 1000 years ago ! You can see this famous tapestry exhibited in the city of Bayeux, located in Normandy. 


The association Patauge Nature from the town of Montviette has dedicated its time collecting historical seeds, and I was able to acquire this specific woad variety from them. They opened a conservatory garden in the town of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives that traces the history of this plant. For a few years now, there has been agricultural development in this part of Normandy to implement once again large scale woad culture for the textile industry. Last time woad was grown so intensively was in the Middle Ages but it collapsed  between the 16th and 17th century with the arrival of tropical indigo, as we know this story so well by now.

So we are seeing a resurgence with woad and flax development in Normandy. The flax industry is being revived with the full chain of production up to the textile with flax denim being prototyped in Normandy. A few farmers are also dedicated to grow woad on several hectares with the extraction of indigo pigment and seed oil with the second year plants.

More creators, artists, textile designers, growers and dyers are committed to explore and implement their practice around indigo and flax wether on an artisan or an industrial scale. This community grows year after year in a beautiful network that you can greet and meet during the JEMA (Journées Internationales du Patrimoine) and the FENO (Festival de l’excellence Normande).



Footnotes: 

* La ferme du Bec-Hellouin is a farm school on permaculture that pioneered in my region, famous for their mandala shaped garden

** seeds from George from Bailiwick Blue, Guernsey

***seeds from Britt from Seaspell Fiber, Oregon

**** seeds from Lise from Liznogoood, Lyon



garden Timelapse:


NÄTTLA indigo confections:

NÄTTLA and nettles workings: 


INSIDE INDIGO book presentation :


Connect

Julia Tabakhova is a Normandy based artisan with a love for illustrations. She graduated in art and cultural mediation and worked as an art educator for numerous museums and institutions. Along the way she crafted didactical booklets to combine knowledge with playfulness. Over the past decade she has delved into the indigo world and parallel to her dyers’s practice she has been journaling her experiments into drawings now available in her new book INSIDE INDIGO, a handbook for dyers..

Follow on Instagram:  @naettla



 
 

Happy September,


It has been such a busy year filled with surprises and honorable moments, especially with Indigo events. Today, I'm sharing an Indigo story and the experiences submitted by Iviva Olenick, a talented textile artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY.


1. Location & Environment

I live in Brooklyn, NY, and partner with several local urban farms and gardens to

grow indigo. I do not have my own dedicated garden. The place where I most consistently grow indigo is on Governors Island at GrowNYC's Teaching Garden. Because it's an island, the weather patterns are slightly different from where I live in Brooklyn. The farm gets direct sun with little shade, so when it's hot, it's even hotter on the farm, and the humidity tends to be

higher. The plants require regular water, which they get through sprinkler "tape" running

through the beds. I grow Isatis tinctoria (known colloquially as Eurasian indigo, woad, medieval indigo), and polygonum tinctorium (Japanese indigo). The woad is technically invasive (although we've not had issues with it) and re-seeds each year. I typically need to

plant new Japanese indigo seeds each year, except for one year when it reseeded itself.


Photos of Isatis tinctoria (Woad) plants submitted by Iviva Olenick


2. Indigo plants & practices


In 2017, I successfully grew polygonum tinctorium, Japanese indigo, and indigofera

tinctorium, tropical indigo, which was a Southern cash crop in the mid 1700s. I

seeded these at home in my small apartment, later transplanting them to Wyckoff

Farm on the East Flatbush-Canarsie border in Brooklyn. The tropical indigo didn't

take upon transplantation; the Japanese indigo grew well but our attempts to follow

pigment extraction methods detailed in books was unsuccessful.

In 2018, I approached GrowNYC about growing indigo on their Governors Island

Farm. They said yes, and we built several beds from scratch. I enlisted friends

throughout NYC to plant indigo seeds at home, and had help from the Education

Department at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We ended up filling beds with

Japanese indigo and a little bit of woad. I persisted in learning dye extraction

methods, which included extracting pigment through fermentation over several

days, adding slaked lime, agitating and letting pigment settle; and going straight

from leaves to dye by heating the leaves in a double boiler to a water temperature

of 160° until leaves turn a reddish brown. Adding an alkaline and agitating, and then

adding thiourea dioxide to reduce oxygen in the vat. I then heated the vat to 110°F

and dipped fabrics in multiple times. The blue never got very dark, but it was a true

purply-blue versus the turquoise from the salt rub method, which I also use.

Photos of Isatis tinctoria (Woad) plants submitted by Iviva Olenick


3. Culture & Story of the region


The types of indigo I grow are not native to Brooklyn. I became interested in indigo because of its colonial history, and wanting to uplift the cultural knowledge and labor of enslaved West Africans, which were exploited to make tropical indigo a successful cash crop. The project has evolved to take a broader intercultural look at indigo cultivation and production, incorporating dye-making methods used around the world, adapted to the limitations of contemporary Brooklyn, which is increasingly hot, humid, and climatically unpredictable.


Indigo inspired textile artwork by Iviva Olenick

Many Shades of Indigo Blue (left), Many Shades of Indigo (right). Pieced, indigo-dyed silk and cotton fabrics. 2022


Indigo Dreams handwoven artist book with indigo leaf-printed yarn and fabric, and yarn dyed with indigo ink. 18"x8.5"x1", 2024.


Connect

Follow on Instagram: @iviva_in_brooklyn





 
 
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