The Colourist online – Dyes in History and Archaeology – Report by Viveca Mellegård

View of the Ottawa River from the National Gallery of Canada 

Photo: Viveca Mellegård

Overview

I was able to attend the 44th edition of the Dyes in History and Archaeology conference in Ottawa, Canada thanks to the Society of Dyers and Colourists bursary. I was presenting a poster at the conference and the bursary made it possible for me attend in person as the funding covered my accommodation and subsistence for the week in Canada. It was a unique opportunity to share the results of recent work on some rare and unique Surinamese textiles for the first time, in front of a room of international conservators, curators, art historians, craftspeople, artists, independent scholars, scientists and academics from museums, universities, research centres and other public or private institutions. 

The Dyes in History and Archaeology conference is a small community of specialists from all over the world whose expertise in colour and dyes is wide ranging. As a participant in the conference, I heard first-hand about projects highlighting the diverse ways in which dyes and organic pigments have been used in the past as well as historical dyeing techniques from different parts of the world.The conference is also a forum for showcasing the many cutting edge methods for imaging and analysing dyes in the lab. Attending the conference in person helped to ground my understanding about the role of material and microscopic analysis of dyes in revealing cultural and technological histories.

This was the second time I received a bursary from the SDC to attend the DHA conference and meeting people once again made me feel like I was part of a community that is intrigued and knowledgeable about colour in all its dimensions. For my PhD, being immersed for a week in the latest global research on dyes is beneficial in situating my research within a much larger and broader canon of colour research. Beyond my PhD, the generative conversations about colour-related research, as well as the warm and collegial atmospherehave the potential to create openings for future projects and collaborations.

Highlights

National Gallery of Canada and

Canadian Museum of History

The venue for the DHA was the National Gallery of Canada, a glass and steel building near the Ottawa River. The gallery was founded in 1880 and houses Indigenous and Canadian art. The Gallery is situated on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation. On the first day of the conference, we were invited to offer thanks to the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation for their stewardship of the land, water and nature surrounding the building. I found this way of opening the conference poignant. The words set a tone and context for the whole conference which I found helped me to understand where in the world we were located and encouraged me to be more attuned to the imprints of its history. 

On the final day, there was a workshop at the Canadian Museum of History, Canada’s largest museum of human history. During the workshop we learned about using porcupine quills as materials. Our instructor Shilo Cote, an Anishinaabeg artisan from the Kitigan Zibi First Nation, taught us how to make a badge out of birch bark and to decorate it by threading dyed quills through the bark to make patterns.

Fascinating research 

The DHA Scientific Committee curated a series of sessions with imaginative names such as: A Poison Chalice, Colour Waves and A Window into Other Worlds. Large parts of the world were represented by the presenters or by where the work is taking place. I felt like I got glimpses through the prism of colour, into countries and continents including Iran, China, North and South America (Argentina, Peru and Suriname) Egypt, Europe (Latvia, Finland, Czechia, Romania, Estonia, Iceland). 

The diversity of the projects continued with the sources of colour which included fungi, lichen (orchil) synthetic and natural dyes and even poisons such as arsenic. Madder, mauve, indigo, berry blues and even mud black were among the colours presented. Equally eclectic were the material contexts of the colours  which included ship wrecks, paintings, dyer’s recipe books, Persian carpets,cosmetics, textiles and clothing – a woven belt, Afghan war rugs, fans from Bordeaux, First World War commemorative handkerchiefs, Javanese batik.

Techniques used to discover the complex stories of global trade, colonial networks, rituals, practices and crafts included FORS (Reflectance Spectrometry), liquid chromatography (LC-DAD and LC-DAD-MS), infrared spectroscopy (FTIR-ATR), Xray spectroscopy (XRF) and optical microscopy (OM). 

Experiencing colour 

What struck me were the histories, practices and heritage carried in the materials themselves. In the absence of written documentation, it was the analysis of the colours and materials which ultimately revealed place, people and colour craft.

Taken together, the experience of being part of the conference and learning about Canada’s indigenous cultures and histories, made a strong impression on me. For my own academic work on Bengali indigo, I could relate to the importance of the links between culture and geography which we learned about in Ottawa through the encounters with Algonquin Anishinaabe culture. In conversations with crafts artists and curators as well as museum artefacts and artworks on display in both the National Gallery of Canada and Canadian Museum of History, it was clear that natural dyes are a reflection of the landscapes of the people who live in them. The knowledge and skills dyers develop in the places where they live not only carry their own beliefs but also the relationships between the people, plants, animals, fungi and even the mud of their ancestors.