Category: Ceres studio 1

Secret dye garden: National Theatre

By the River Thames, behind the scenes at the National Theatre, we met with the printers and dyers of the costume workshop. Ceres spent the day teaching the team how to extract colours from plants, and print onto fabric with natural dyes.

The National Theatre are investing in planting a dye garden. On the balcony, overlooking the river, are the emerging shoots of it. We are looking forward to how their colours grow over the following seasons. It will be fascinating to see how this new way of working integrates with the production of the upcoming costumes from the design team.

Armenian narrative. 1.

Ceres were invited by TUMO, the Centre for creative technologies, to teach natural dye print in Yerevan, Armenia. The course focused on research and design, and culminated with an exhibition showing the students prototype scarves for the TUMO shop. We spent two weeks in this elegant and vibrant city.

The plane’s descent was into a 4.00 am inkyness. Somnolent velvet-dark warmth, the Arrival’s hall perfumed by bouquets of flowers; greetings Armenian style. Yerevan has trapped itself a heatwave. Ravenous, we find the fridge abundant with berries, peaches, and cherries; already we love our flat mate Doretee. The fruit is juicy and sweet and aromatic.

TUMO is in an ornate 1910 building. The shop/gallery is on the ground floor, the interior has high ceilings, a grand-messed-up vibe, and a terrazzo staircase. Curious original features of Art-deco double fronted tiled fireplaces, hint of cold winters. Our studio was hot-like a furnace, with a promise of air-conditioning soon. Afternoon light made complex shadows on the yellow blinds. Flo and I adeptly create a print studio from the tables and work benches; finding solutions that enable our five students to make and design with natural print pastes.

We took the students sketching at The National Gallery of Armenia; seven floors of marble-clad interior, and a trove of Armenian greats. The students showed us the quintisential Armenian painting by Martiros Saryan. A sublime-coloured depiction of the countryside, complete with dancing villagers, and mountains. Outside the museum it was underworld-hot. In TUMO’s newly air-conned studio’s we colour-fixed the sample stripes. They were disappointing; lacking vibrancy, depth, and variation in colour. Turning sleuths; we discovered a translation error for the mordant, a tiny word difference made a significant colour difference. Our co-conspirator in natural dyes, Dorothee, found balls of purest natural alum, and our colours were revived. We taught the students how to make cut-paper stencil designs, and they printed onto pomegranate/avocado dyed backgrounds. Flo and I started a collection of sample colour stripes for the studio, painterly-impressionist, as the newsprint degraded (we missed our tape from home).

On tour: TOAST London

On tour! Swooping through London, revelling in the clarity of a glorious sunshine-day. We wended bikes through the streets, to view our work adorning the TOAST store windows.

Bikes jostled by traffic in thronging Hampstead streets. Gathering speed on the train, then off, and cycling past a glam Islington wedding.

Dropping into the narrow streets of Shoreditch; the Toast store has a cool green garden. 

The afternoon meandered a tranquil route towards Soho, in a happy sustainable journey across London. 

Love Toast Mayfair, the huge modern windows displaying fifteen panels. All the colourways, jaunty juxtapositions, prints vying for attention.  

To have our work adorning shop windows in London’s iconic shopping districts; Kings Rd, Soho, Mayfair.

The printed panels can be seen in 23 Toast stores across England, London, and New York, throughout the month of May. The bike’s will not pedalo across the Atlantic.

TOAST: Ceres

A Lightness of Being.

A collaboration with TOAST for their seasonal concept.

Ceres designed, printed, and curated panels in natural dyes to hang in the windows of all TOAST stores.

Mesmerised by two-hundred-and-thirty-one panels of criss-crossing soft-shades. 

Each stripe of colour tells a story. Provenance is a tour of Western Europe; Burgundy oak, Brittany bark, London indigo.

Nettles. Fresh, just unfurling, from a rooftop garden, gently soaked for several days. Mixed with farmers marke red onions skins for deeper green. Or, Brixton weld from Flo’s garden for a vibrant shot of Spring.

Color of remembrance; madder roots from Susan Dye, of Rainbow’s colours. Orange transposing to pink, beautiful colours for the soul. Spanish pomegranates, holding images of sunshine and friends. Whiff of fermentation as we print. 

We are immersed in our designs, slowly emerging from overlapping colours. Some sliding into peripheral consciousness, others boldy announce themselves.

Each panel unique. There is a longing to display them all together, festoon, to meander through tranquil swathes of lime, tangerine, cherry and cucumber. 

Words: by Ceres.

Images: header, 1, 2, 3, and 5, by Lauren Maccabee for TOAST.

Image: 4, Ceres.

Becoming an ecology

An extravaganza of sustainable colour. 

We invited Ceres alumni to become part of an Ecology of natural dye print. To contribute to a day of sharing ideas, co-designing and playfully exploring print techniques. Organised by Lara, as a component of her MA in Academic Practice, and co-hosted by Flo. Lara was researching how practitioners navigate this emergent natural dye-print movement. How a process may influence designing and making, and how a commons approach could encourage experiments, learning, and adoption of ideas. 

Inspired by a youth spent at dance festivals, trading steps of pattern and rhythm on the dance floor. Swing camps, dancing all night, where invention happened at 3.00 am in the subliminal spaces between sleep-haze and dawn-light. A desire to create a similar sensitivity of community in natural dye printing; with an ethos of playfully sharing to develop a design. Perception flourishing amongst the collective making… chat, cut stencils, arrange, print, this is our liminal-light learning.

Silk-hemp, a luxurious, cost effective fibre-mix that reflects Ceres interest in sustainability was chosen for the printed studio length. Linen, for the participants take-home prints. Lara made a smorgasbord of dye colours, predominantly bio-waste for the linen, and colourfast heritage plants for the silk-hemp. She printed two sample sets of the key colours on both fabrics, enabling participants to reference both washed (colours can change dramatically) and unwashed.

To-ing-fro-ing. Dance manoeuvre of collaboration. 

Flo arrived in the morning with a linen epiphany. She described a “quilt” of squares, a sampler, where participants could work into each other’s designs. They would print two pieces of linen, one for Ceres and one for a take-away. Perfect idea! Except, participants in awe of others designs, were loath to over-print and change their squares. 

Serendipity of printing. 

The design theme, Place and Provenance was taken literally; Googled and mulled, then whoosh, and they were gone. Chatting, trading, manoeuvring screens. Stop-motion recording a choreograph of steps around the print table.

Morning; transformations as the groups responded to each other’s prints on silk-hemp. 

Lunch; steaming dahlia prints, journeying from Somerset to Greece, a suitcase of flower rich scarves. Making dye-paste from Meadowsweet from the Isle of Skye, perfume of marshmallows and a gleam of yellow.

Afternoon; a thrill of mystery, modifiers printed onto the silk-hemp, participants quizzing how beige dye may metamorphose into intense new colour. A flurry of shapes blossoming across the fabric, a burst of paparazzi, and a tight roll into the steamer for fixing.

A parade of linen and silk-hemp sashayed into the room, unfurling for display and contemplation. Silk-hemp fixed but not yet washed, the linen fixed and washed. 

The Preview, to share participants personal work and the prints created during the day. Unique screen printed fabric garlanded table tops and scarves lounged over the display table. The silk-hemp was taped to the wall, and toasted with prosecco.

Provenance, Brixton. Flaunting the newest sibling in the Ecology of Natural Dye Printing.

The studio in Brixton

Ceres studio 1 is a contemporary natural dye print studio in London. It was established by Lara Mantell and Florence Hawkins as a collaborative venture to share knowledge and experimental work with natural dyes. The duo have individual yet complementary areas of expertise; Lara’s in textile design and natural dye printing onto fabrics, and Flo’s in printing with natural dyes on fabric and paper. This expertise and enthusiasm has led to their Brixton studio becoming a hub of colourful natural dye research and design projects.