Ros Humphries

I am looking at the prints on your wall – are they by you? No, they are my partner’s. He’s a painter but over the last few years he’s been printmaking more and occasionally we work together. We made a series of cushions using natural print pastes mixed with my dyes recently, using things like weld, iron and other ingredients. He prints a few days a week when I do my admin in the house and then I have the studio for the rest of the time. So, you’re kind of hot desking. That’s right – we never work in here at the same time.

When did you meet? About 12 years ago when we were both living in London. And are you from a creative background as well? I did a foundation at Camberwell and then a degree at Middlesex. I was always interested in 3D and the juxtaposition of material and colour. For me, anything in isolation is great but it’s when you offset it with something else that it really becomes interesting, whether that’s a colour or a texture. Something matte next to something shiny or something textured next to something smooth, it’s that sort of interplay between things that I find interesting. I did my degree in Furniture Design and then I worked at Habitat in London for the next 20 years. Was that at Tottenham Court Road? That’s right – we were initially above the store there but we then moved to Princelet Street, in Shoreditch, where I initially worked as a product developer and then went on to be a buyer. I met David when we were both living in East London but following the birth of our daughter, Poppy, as well as getting Polly, our Border Terrier, we needed to move because there just wasn’t enough space in the one bedroom flat that we were in. We had been coming down to Kent for some time – a few times a year to start with, but that gradually changed to every month and then most weekends, so it was the logical place to look.

A lot of people in Faversham seem to have followed a similar path. Yeah, there are a lot of people who have moved out of London now living here. Like us, they usually need more space and want to pursue creative careers, so take the leap and then work really hard to find their thing outside of London – we moved here about eight years ago. I commuted for a year but I was beginning to fall out of love with retail and the unsustainable churn. I moved from lighting to textiles during that last year at Habitat and as a result, started travelling to India where I saw first-hand how polluting the textile industry was. We had moved to Kent for more space, but also to be a little bit closer to the sea and nature – I realised then how disconnected I had become from that, the cyclical aspect of it. At work I was working on the Christmas collection in spring and on Autumn/Winter during the summer. So, you were feeling out of sync with nature and your environment? That’s right and I think I felt a sort of pull to be closer to it. Living in London is so fast paced, it’s competitive, it never stops and I think I just wanted to feel a little more grounded. Towards the end of my time at Habitat, we did a mud dye project for a cushion collection with a women’s cooperative in Africa, which I found fascinating.

I started reading up about natural dyeing and how different countries had their own specialist dyes. In Africa, for example, they use a lot of clays and earth pigments whereas Asia has a strong history of working with indigo and the use of ingredients such as turmeric. When you think of any country, you think of the colours associated with it and those are based on the natural dyes they can grow or source locally. I went on to learn about the history of natural colour, because we have only been using synthetic dyes for less than 170 years, and I just found that whole world fascinating.

I had already decided that I wanted to leave my job, but wasn’t sure which direction I would take. I considered floristry but quickly learnt that I am all fingers and thumbs, so soon gave that idea up but did meet an incredible florist at that time called Leigh Chappell. She told me that naturally dyed ribbons would be something that would be of real interest to sustainable florists, a growing movement of floral artists who are using seasonal British flowers, so you only get tulips in spring and roses in summer.

We do seem to spend our lives fighting against nature, don’t we. You’re absolutely right though, there does seem to be a movement towards getting back in sync with it and the cycle of the seasons. It used to be the case that anything that had an environmental slant was considered a bit ‘new age’, but thanks to people like you, that perception is quickly changing. You are proving that environmentally sound products can be of the highest quality and at the same time, you don’t have to sacrifice style. That’s the crux of it for me – you’ve hit the nail on the head. I want to make natural dyeing something that is contemporary and desirable. I want to show that you can make things in a fresh new way, that is sustainable and demonstrates how things should and could be, in the future. And it’s also about products being made locally – by someone who you can have a conversation with. We’ve lost that link with the people who grow, cook or make that we used to have. It’s provenance. I know where the sheep are farmed for the socks that I make and the type of sheep they are. I know the factory that’s knitting the socks and I know what dyes I use because I forage or grow the plants myself, and for any colours that can’t be derived from native plants, I buy dyes from sustainable sources.

I was expecting your studio to be full of jars of coloured liquids but it’s not – do you just make one colour batch at a time? Yes, although I tend to have several pots of colour on the go at any one time. I store lots of ingredients that I’ve collected for new batches like these avocado skins and stones. Am I right in saying that avocado surprises people because it produces an unexpected colour? Yeah, this soft pink sample is from avocado. The one next to it may be madder, which makes more of a coral colour and these yellows here are from onion skins, so I have buckets
of ingredients dotted around that I collect in paper bags.

When you first started this, you must have rushed down to the second-hand shop, bought up all the old saucepans and then come back here to experiment with everything. Yeah, and at that time I was working in the kitchen. What was the first thing you tried? Avocado. I soon found that the process is quite addictive but it’s not without its frustrations.

How long does it take to create the dye? That depends. If you’re harvesting fresh flowers in the summer for example, you would treat them like a tea and steep them gently, because they’re delicate and if you overheat them, you kill the colour instantly – what was a vibrant yellow or orange will die to beige. You need to coax the colour out of them, but it can still be quite a quick process, whereas something harder like alder cones or oak galls, take much longer. They’re pure tannin and anything tannin rich like tea, coffee, oak galls, walnuts, acorns or cones give you a really strong, long lasting colour. You need to boil those for several hours to extract the colour and you can let them sit for even longer – two or three days if you wanted to. So, you’re judging when you think the colour is right and that’s where the experimental bit comes in? Yes, it is experimental but it is also down to experience. I’ve messed up a lot. I spent two or three years frustrated out of my mind because I had come from the world of retail where you’re working with Pantone chips – plus or minus two percent and something would be rejected. This is more like cooking though, you get a feel for it. Making your dye can take anything between one – three days and the longer you take and the more effort you put in, the better the results will be.

Was there any stage when you got frustrated with the time element? Initially yes and also with the colour results. I may have made some ribbon for a florist using rosehips and achieved a nice shade of apricot, which they loved, but if I was asked to reproduce that, I would do exactly the same thing but get a completely different shade. With natural dyeing, everything is a variable. It is only with experience that you start to know how your ingredients work, but you still get caught out. Which shop your avocados are from will make a difference because they will probably be different varieties. The time of year, whether something is fresh or dried and even the water type and temperature that you use will all alter the results. That’s fascinating. It’s ultra-nerdy, but it’s quite interesting.

I want to make natural dyeing something that is contemporary and desirable.

The natural hues that you produce are amazing. When you see them in the boxes here, they look great together, don’t they? A lot of plants have similar warm base tones and those often filter through, which means that when you put naturally dyed colours side by side, they often work well together.

Could you talk me through the process of dyeing from start to finish. You start by selecting your fabric – there are two types of fibre, or fabric. You can only use natural fibres, synthetics like nylon or polyester won’t work because they’re essentially plastic. There are two categories of natural fibre – cellulose, which is plant based, so things like cotton, linen and hemp; or protein based, which are animal fibres like silk or wool. You then scour your fibre to clean it. Whatever you dye with, whether it’s an old t-shirt or some new fabric, (which will probably be starched and bleached), you have to remove any traces of chemicals, oils or dirt. You then mordant the fabric, where you soak it in an alum or tannin solution. That is probably the most important step because that’s preparing the fibre to soak up the dye – it’s like priming your fabric so that when you dye, the molecules bond to it, rather than just sit on the surface. With natural dyeing, the prep is what takes the time and the dye part is reasonably straight forward.

You then make your dye bath and dye your fabric. Finally, if you want to, you can modify the colour. Your fabric may come out of the dye bath as a strong yellow, for example, but if you were to put that in an acid bath, which sounds alarming but it’s just something like vinegar or lemon juice, that will usually strip the colour back, which you could do if you thought it was too bright or strong. Alternatively, you could use an alkaline, something like soda ash or baking powder, and that will usually intensify and warm up a colour, so a pink will get rosier and redder and more concentrated. The other thing you can do is ‘sadden’, where you use iron water (ferrous sulphate). Rusty colours will change to chocolate brown, tan colours shift to grey and yellows usually shift to greens. These modifications allow you to expand your colour palette. The modifying step happens really quickly. If it’s going to change, it will change instantly.

So, do you have to make a new dye bath every time you dye? No, the good thing is that you can use the same bath over and over if you want to. You could make a strong bath, out of say onion skins, which will give you a really super saturated yellow. Then, every time you dye a new piece of fabric, it will get progressively lighter – it’s called using an exhaust bath. You can keep dyeing in a bath and you will never exhaust the colour, it will just get progressively lighter.

So, these pots have all got solutions you can use again – what’s in this pot? Erm. You’re smelling it. It’s not a glamorous job. I think there’s probably madder in there. What is madder? A perennial plant that 150 years ago we used to grow and cultivate in large quantities here in Kent. It’s a pinky red, so you will get anything from coral right up to strong reds from it. It’s unusual though, in that you use the root for the colour. Oh, you haven’t mentioned using roots before. Roots, leaves, bark, seeds, flowers – you can dye with anything but lots of native plants want to give you tans, pinks or yellows. So, it’s about trial and error but that is what forms your connection with it, you want to learn what you can do with every part of something. You start to form a local, seasonal colour map of your environment, so in this garden I know what will give me colour and what there is in my allotment. I know what will give me colour on my dog walk, where the nettle patches are, where the elder berries will be. It’s really interesting because the connection you form with your environment, the seasons and to nature is such a bonus and that’s the real fascination for me.

When you first started, you must have created a long list of plants that you wanted to try. You do become obsessed and want to try everything. I have some great miniature snips in my bag, always at the ready for potential finds and I now look for signals in the landscape around me whenever I’m out and about. For example, when you see the hawthorn blossom in spring, you’re likely to harvest good berries later in the season. You form a connection to the plants around you and that’s so good, that’s the best bit – it’s not just about the colour, it’s that knowledge you gain, you start to look for and get excited by completely different things. I guess it’s like food, you never get bored because the whole thing is cyclical & seasonal. There’s always something different to dye with because there’s always something new emerging. You’re lucky to have a reason to explore and understand the plants around us. That’s quite a privilege, it shouldn’t be, but most of us have lost that knowledge. Shifting career has allowed me that and I can’t believe it. I walk around and I think, this is exactly what I wanted to be doing when I lived in London 20 years ago, but how could I have done that then, how could I have made that happen? Now, I just feel really lucky.

Where does your connection with plants come from? I just love nature and animals, a lot more than humans sometimes! My parents never gardened but my grandparents had a garden in Sussex where they would grow vegetables, so I used to go and help my grandmother with the tomatoes and things like that when we visited. Growing up, my parents had a friend called Mary, a keen gardener, who strangely enough now lives just four doors down from me. When I was young, we would come down to Faversham from London and spend the day in her garden and I just found it the most rewarding space. I didn’t have any siblings and I don’t have a very big family, so she became a really important person to me. So, an emotional connection with nature and the outdoors was developing during your childhood. I would say so, but it’s also just really grounding, it slows everything down when you’re connected to the cyclical nature of the seasons. You know that the sloe berries are going to come in autumn and you know that the nettles will be there in a couple of months – there’s something reassuring about that in a world that’s so unstable. It wasn’t possible to have a garden until we moved to Kent. We now have an allotment as well, where I grow dye plants and we grow vegetables. And in your garden here, are these dyeing plants as well? It’s so difficult to talk about dyeing isn’t it, without people getting confused!? Yeah, I start every workshop by saying that I’ve been dyeing for eight years but that’s dyeing and not dying! Back to your original question though, yes some are. I have a lot of plants growing here that are in the blue/purple colour palette, like this aquilegia and the bearded iris. Later there will be scabious, they’ll give you a pale green-blue.

It’s provenance. I know where the sheep are farmed for the socks that I make and the type of sheep they are. I know the factory that’s knitting the socks and I know what dyes I use because I forage or grow the plants myself…

There must have a been a period when you were learning so much – some things must have been disappointing and others unexpected. Apart from avocado, are there any other plants which were a big surprise? Red cabbage is quite surprising in the way you can manipulate the natural colour result because it contains anthocyanin, which is extremely susceptible to pH change. It’s not suitable for anything you may want to sell, because it isn’t very lightfast – it’s what is called a ‘fugitive dye’, but they’re great for workshops because if you add acid they will change to a fuchsia pink, whereas if you add alkaline, they will shift to a turquoise blue. Some plant dyes are susceptible to that kind of change but you can try the same thing with other plants and nothing will happen. It’s all to do with the chemical reaction but that’s not what I’m really driven by. What I love, especially after years of extreme frustration coming from a world of retail where consistency was everything, is that I’ve now come full circle to where I can just embrace whatever results the process gives me. Accepting that this is life, this is what we should be happy with? Absolutely. I used to tear my hair out trying to colour match something that customers sent to me, but now I have learnt to tell people that I can only produce from what I currently have available and that the colour palette will change naturally throughout the season. If somebody comes to me saying they need that sage green that I had previously, I may have to say, sorry but the ivy berries are over now – you can have it but it will have to wait until next February! I am used to that unpredictability now and actually enjoy it because the colours are constantly changing which keeps my interest.

Part of what you’re doing is therefore educating people to have the right mindset – that we can’t just expect things on demand. Absolutely right, you can’t have everything all the time. That won’t give us a sustainable future. It’s the same with food, the two are so connected. We need to eat and live a bit more seasonally, in the moment. That’s how we used to live but in a short period of time we’ve completely lost that, because everything’s everywhere. I used to be embarrassed to tell a customer that they couldn’t have something but I quite like having to do that now. I’m kind of proud because this is what I do. I’m not trying to imitate a synthetic world. It is what it is and when that sage comes back around, you’re so excited. You haven’t seen that colour for 12 months so it’s special – it helps you to appreciate things more.

I think the only time I ever get that same sense of seasonal excitement that your describing, is when spring comes and I feel that little bit of warmth in the sun which lifts the spirit. You feel that shift don’t you, but if you were doing what I do, you’d see that every day of the year, a shoot of something would be coming through or a flower would start to develop. It’s just more of a connection, I guess, because I’m looking all the time.

Sadly, we need to wrap our conversation up but before we finish, can you tell me a little bit about the workshops that you mentioned earlier. Are they popular? They are but I usually only have 6-10 people per workshop, depending on where they are being held, because I want to ensure everybody gets something great from them. Different people want different things. Some are gardeners and they want to see what can be created with their flowers, while others are crafters who want to learn to dye yarn for knitting or embroidery. Dyeing isn’t difficult to do but you need to know how to do it and I don’t want people to come to a three-hour workshop, have a nice time but then go home and not be sure what to do next. I want to make sure that people go home and can have a go from their own kitchen, as I did when I started this amazing journey eight years ago.