The workshop Indigo Discharge, Blue, Brown, and White
During the weekend of 16 to 18 May 2025 dyer and textile artist Elin Noble will held the workshop „Indigo Discharge: Blue Brown, and White“ at Workshop Hannover, Zentrum für Kreatives Gestalten e.v., Hannover. Some few places are still available for anyone who wants to learn dyeing techniques from this inspiring teacher. About the workshop Elin Noble wrote this introduction:
“We will begin by applying indigo on cellulose cloth (cotton, linen, hemp, ramie), then we will selectively remove indigo through a series of resist techniques (paste, clay, shibori) and direct application (stamp, paint, spray). We will remove the the indigo dye using potassium permanganate, which first leaves the background color in varying shades of brown. Further processing removes the brown, leaving the background color white with an indigo blue pattern. Additional material will be brought by the participants, a list of materials will be sent beforehand “
On 18 May at 19.00 pm after the workshop is closed, the exhibition of Elin Noble and her husband Lasse Antonsen will have a festive opening, guests are very welcome!
I came to know Elin Noble as a dyer and textile artist at the 10th international Shibori-symposium in Oaxaca Mexico in November 2016, organized by Yoshiko Wada. Many more well-known dyers were among the 300 participants of that wonderful event, like Michel Garcia from France who had a class at the Textile Museum. I wished I could have signed up for his class and that of further dyer-artists! Elin told me that she is meeting with an international group of dyers once a year to discuss new colors and methods of dyeing they found out!
Later, when taking part in the Korean Bojagi Forum 2023 in Seoul Korea, I was pleased to see Elin’s work there, together with that of her husband Lasse Antonsen, an artist, art historian, curator and writer, exhibited at that Bojagi Forum.
In Korea the organizer, Bojagi artist Chunghie Lee, had invited the 10 foreign participants at the Korean Bojagi Forum to a Silk Residency in the silk town of Jinju, where 10 Korean Bojagi masters taught us ( see my article on this event https://www.textile-forum-blog.org/2023/12/jinju-silk-residency/). It was there that I came to know Elin as a very encouraging teacher, always willing to help and giving positive feedback to the other participants. During my time in Korea I also met with another dyer, Kathrin Reichenbach, German by nationality, who lives and works in Peking, making haute couture clothing and textile art! Both Elin and Kathrin raised my curiosity in the art of fabric dyeing with natural materials! I had learned from a dyer with natural materials during my study year in Finland, and still have the color samples we than made (in 1968!), but since meeting with Elin and Kathrin I had started to do more natural dyeing myself!
I am very happy that Elin was immediately enthusiastic about coming to Germany to teach dyeing and even more happy that she and her husband Lasse also wanted to show their exhibition about their Residency in Denmark on the Island of Funen (see https://www.textile-forum-blog.org/2025/02/the-apple-tree-on-the-abandoned-railroad-line/). For me this is going to be a personal experience of learning from the best, and I am grateful to workshop Hannover that they made it all work out so well!
Contact: www. workshop-ev.de, phone 0511/344711
