The beauty of natural dyes

At the roots of colour and craft

Colour has always been part of who we are, a bridge between the human hand and the rhythms of the natural world.

Long before chemistry and industry, people dyed their fabrics with what the earth offered: leaves, bark, roots, and flowers.
From the Egyptians and their indigo linens to the ancient Chinese dyers who documented colour recipes on silk scrolls, natural dyeing was an art form and a language.

It wasn’t until 1856, when William Perkins accidentally created the first synthetic aniline dye (a soft purple known as mauve), that this deep bond between nature and colour began to fade. Today, over 8,000 synthetic dyes are used in the textile industry, most derived from fossil fuels.

The hidden cost of synthetic colours

Modern fashion runs on synthetic dyes - fast, cheap, and toxic. Around 70% of all textiles are coloured using azo dyes, some of which are proven carcinogens.
While regulations exist in Europe, much of the world’s dyeing happens elsewhere, in factories where chemical waste flows into rivers, poisoning soil and communities.

Behind each bright synthetic hue lies an invisible cost, one paid by our ecosystems.

Returning to the roots of colour

Exploring natural dyeing is not just about replacing chemicals. It’s about changing our relationship with nature, learning from its pace, accepting its unpredictability, and honouring its cycles.

No two dye baths are ever the same. The shade shifts with the water, the soil, the season - making every colour alive, imperfect, and unrepeatable.

As John Ruskin wrote in 1859, “The best fate for a colour is when no one, seeing it, knows what to call it.” That is the essence of natural dyes - colours that breathe, evolve, and refuse to be defined.

Dyeing with food waste & local plants

There’s something deeply grounding in dyeing with what’s around you - the skins of your dinner onions, the coffee grounds from your morning ritual, the leaves and bark gathered from a walk in the woods.

Working with food waste and local flora not only reduces environmental impact but helps us reconnect with our surroundings.
Each region has its palette, each landscape its own pigments - the walnut hulls, eucalyptus bark, and wild nettles of one place will never look quite the same somewhere else.

When foraging, respect is key:

• Collect only plants in abundance, never from protected areas.
• Take just a little, never the whole plant.
• Learn to recognise each species; some can irritate the skin.

Dyeing becomes a conversation with place, a collaboration with the land itself.

More than colour

Natural dyeing is a slow and sensorial process. It invites patience, curiosity, and wonder. Through it, we remember that colour is alive, that it changes with light, time, and touch.

At AATMA Studio, we explore this alchemy through natural pigments and hand-block printing, blending craft, consciousness, and creativity. Each hue carries a trace of the world it came from, a leaf, a flower, a season.

To work with nature’s colours is to accept imperfection, to celebrate the unique, and to rediscover beauty in the process itself.