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Reviews: 3 Documentary DVDs on Dyeing
Jun. 8th, 2008 01:17 pm1.) In Search of Lost Colour: The Story of Natural Dyes, Maiwa Productions.
This is one of the DVDs i bought at the Textile Museum in DC. I bought this one potentially to show in my dye class, because students want to know about natural vs. synthetic dyes, and we only do practical projects in class using synthetics (that being the industry standard in theatrical dye shops). Still, though the class is primarily intended to cover topics that pertain to professional theatrical dye and paint processes, i do also like to discuss historical context for dyeing in various eras and cultures, and i was hoping that this documentary would be a good overview of natural dyeing methods using plant- and animal-based dyestuffs, which it is. It is also an excellent resource for explaining why natural dyeing is a completely different world, time consuming and inexact, and why in general it is not practical for theatrical costuming (unless costumes are to be made from purchased naturally-dyed textiles).
The documentarians traveled all over the planet making this film and cover a wide range of dyes--Turkish madder root, cochineal, indigo, shellfish purple, and more. It'll be a great way to give my students a rough background in various kinds of natural dye processes and, should any of them take an interest in it, a jumping-off point for further exploration of it as an art, while illustrating why we don't cover natural dye processes in practical projects in the course.
2.) Indigo: A World of Blue, Maiwa Productions.
I also got this one at the DC Textile Museum, and it's a fascinating look into indigo processing in various cultures--Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey, Laos, and India. It includes interviews with indigo dye historians and scholars from all over the world and features tons of amazing footage of indigenous dye facilities using basic early technology (clay vats in the ground, fermenting pools, stomping the indigo bath, etc). It's an excellent documentary if you are interested in the cultural heritage of indigo, but also a fairly good deterrent if you are thinking of exploring indigo dyeing, as it discusses how difficult, time-consuming, inexact, back-breaking, and fickle the dye process can be. I probably won't be showing it in my class unless the students really go ape over natural dyes and just want to see it; even then, i will probably loan it out to interested parties to watch in their own time.
3.) Arimatsu - Narumi Shibori: Celebrating 400 Years of Japanese Artisan Design, Studio Galli.
This one, i first heard about on the Dyers e-list, unfortunately because there was some sort of problem with the first run of DVDs where half the program wouldn't play. They recalled the disks and put out a new corrected version, which i received as a birthday gift from my grandmother. It's narrated by Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, author of Shibori: The Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dyeing, among other works.
This documentary is invaluable to those wanting to learn shibori techniques, and functions as an excellent supplement to Wada's book, which describes many of the techniques, but frankly, nothing beats watching a master artisan actually performing the tasks required to create the effects.
I have a few criticisms of the DVD, none of which remotely come close to outweighing its supreme value as a resource. The editing at times isn't that great--sometimes the narration is redundant, restating nearly verbatim information already imparted, and sometimes the footage is repetitive in similar or related techniques. The intervals between sections drag, taking a couple beats too many to move onto the next section (or, it feels that way to me, thinking at the fast pace of modern American life). I don't intend to show my class the sections depiction the actual dyeing process, partly because we'll have already covered that in the course once we get to the shibori project, but partly also because the artisans aren't always using proper PPEs and it makes me crazy to watch.
I will also probably shuffle the order in which we watch the techniques in class, because some of the more complex techniques are presented before simpler ones, and i'd rather show them things in ascending order of difficulty (i.e., here's something you can do with no special equipment in a few steps, here's something you can do that you need to make a simple tool first to create, here's something that is fairly complex and requires many different steps, etc).
All told, i recommend all three of these documentaries to anyone interested in historical dye processes; they are full of great information and honestly, reading about something doesn't compare to observing experts actually DOING it! All of them are around $20-$30, very affordable for a niche-market DVD.
This is one of the DVDs i bought at the Textile Museum in DC. I bought this one potentially to show in my dye class, because students want to know about natural vs. synthetic dyes, and we only do practical projects in class using synthetics (that being the industry standard in theatrical dye shops). Still, though the class is primarily intended to cover topics that pertain to professional theatrical dye and paint processes, i do also like to discuss historical context for dyeing in various eras and cultures, and i was hoping that this documentary would be a good overview of natural dyeing methods using plant- and animal-based dyestuffs, which it is. It is also an excellent resource for explaining why natural dyeing is a completely different world, time consuming and inexact, and why in general it is not practical for theatrical costuming (unless costumes are to be made from purchased naturally-dyed textiles).
The documentarians traveled all over the planet making this film and cover a wide range of dyes--Turkish madder root, cochineal, indigo, shellfish purple, and more. It'll be a great way to give my students a rough background in various kinds of natural dye processes and, should any of them take an interest in it, a jumping-off point for further exploration of it as an art, while illustrating why we don't cover natural dye processes in practical projects in the course.
2.) Indigo: A World of Blue, Maiwa Productions.
I also got this one at the DC Textile Museum, and it's a fascinating look into indigo processing in various cultures--Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey, Laos, and India. It includes interviews with indigo dye historians and scholars from all over the world and features tons of amazing footage of indigenous dye facilities using basic early technology (clay vats in the ground, fermenting pools, stomping the indigo bath, etc). It's an excellent documentary if you are interested in the cultural heritage of indigo, but also a fairly good deterrent if you are thinking of exploring indigo dyeing, as it discusses how difficult, time-consuming, inexact, back-breaking, and fickle the dye process can be. I probably won't be showing it in my class unless the students really go ape over natural dyes and just want to see it; even then, i will probably loan it out to interested parties to watch in their own time.
3.) Arimatsu - Narumi Shibori: Celebrating 400 Years of Japanese Artisan Design, Studio Galli.
This one, i first heard about on the Dyers e-list, unfortunately because there was some sort of problem with the first run of DVDs where half the program wouldn't play. They recalled the disks and put out a new corrected version, which i received as a birthday gift from my grandmother. It's narrated by Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, author of Shibori: The Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dyeing, among other works.
This documentary is invaluable to those wanting to learn shibori techniques, and functions as an excellent supplement to Wada's book, which describes many of the techniques, but frankly, nothing beats watching a master artisan actually performing the tasks required to create the effects.
I have a few criticisms of the DVD, none of which remotely come close to outweighing its supreme value as a resource. The editing at times isn't that great--sometimes the narration is redundant, restating nearly verbatim information already imparted, and sometimes the footage is repetitive in similar or related techniques. The intervals between sections drag, taking a couple beats too many to move onto the next section (or, it feels that way to me, thinking at the fast pace of modern American life). I don't intend to show my class the sections depiction the actual dyeing process, partly because we'll have already covered that in the course once we get to the shibori project, but partly also because the artisans aren't always using proper PPEs and it makes me crazy to watch.
I will also probably shuffle the order in which we watch the techniques in class, because some of the more complex techniques are presented before simpler ones, and i'd rather show them things in ascending order of difficulty (i.e., here's something you can do with no special equipment in a few steps, here's something you can do that you need to make a simple tool first to create, here's something that is fairly complex and requires many different steps, etc).
All told, i recommend all three of these documentaries to anyone interested in historical dye processes; they are full of great information and honestly, reading about something doesn't compare to observing experts actually DOING it! All of them are around $20-$30, very affordable for a niche-market DVD.
