Indigo does not ask permission. Neither does she.
Just outside Dublin, Kathryn Davey is mapping color. Not on a screen. In trees. She is currently documenting every dye source within a 40-mile radius of her home, bark by branch by fallen leaf, which is either a research project or a very slow walk, depending on how you look at it.
She came to natural dyeing by accident and stayed for indigo. Watching fabric lift from a vat green and turn blue in open air is, she will tell you, not something you get over. She works only with natural fibers, often Irish alpaca sourced nearby. The plants, she says, are collaborators. The color they give is theirs to decide.
She kept her first piece. A blotchy indigo bedsheet, imperfect and entirely the point. After burnout paused her commercial work, she returned to what the bedsheet already knew: curiosity is the only rule worth keeping.
"Her most surprising color? Chartreuse. Pulled from a plant. Offered freely."
The Makers : portraits in words
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