Near Ubud, Bali, by driving along windey roads through little kampungs (villages) towards the coast, Tarum natural dyes have their workshop. Mr. Iwan, the owner, was kind enough to show me around their lovely (really, it was, and mostly open air) workshop, explain the different dyestuffs and techniques they use and show me samples of work the have done previously.
Mr. Iwan Triadi and Mr. Made Arsana, the owners first started experimenting with natural dyes in 1998, predicting growth of the area in the next 6 years. The prediction has been fulfilled and a steady but "organic" growth of the business has taken place.
Tarum uses leaves instead of roots, bark and wood as the tree can keep on living and regrown the leaves which is a sustainable harvesting method. The dying method is inspired by traditional pre-chemical dyeing. Most of the natural blues, reds, blacks, purples, and browns on traditional Indonesian textiles come from two vegetable dyes: indigo blue, from the shrubs Indigofera tinctoria and suffruticosa, and morinda red, from Morinda trees. Mango is used for yellow and orange. The plants are locally (in their back yard or in Singaraja, north Coast Bali) grown except for the Secang which comes from West Java because it is not sufficiently available in Bali.
Leaves for dyeing grown in the back yard
Harvesting Leaves to be boiled down to the dye stuff
Indigo leaf
Tarum also have a spinning and weaving facility; a wonderfully airy, spacious, light room. I mentioned to Pak Iwan that this is a much nicer working environment compared to the stuffy garment manufacturing factories I have seen in Indonesia; Pak Iwan however laughed and said one of their companies biggest challenges is in fact to recruit workers as the young people would rather work in mobile phone shops, can you believe it!
Weaving studio
Hand loom
Being dying professionals, Tarum are constantly expanding their repertoire on dying methods and have some in stock which are looking very interesting to Studio Anglindo...
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