Natural Dyes

October 2025

10 participants

Working with Christiana Vardakou (https://www.christianavardakou.com/) we explored the natural dyes available to us on the island, including pistachio and onion skins, eucalyptus leaves and tree bark, pomegranate shells and acorns. We learned how to extract dye from these plants and use them alone and with iron to create a rich local palette.

We provided a series of underwater photographs of seagrass on the shores of Aegina, and used these as inspiration for our colour mixes, and also making images using the wax drawing technique called Batik. A series of pillow cases were created for the Vessel studio, filling each pillow with dried seagrass for the stuffing, following the traditional methods of making mattresses from seagrass.

In this workshop the intention was to create a direct link between the land and the sea, using dyes we made to make images of the seagrass below the surface, creating new ways to think about visibility, awareness and respect for our bioregion.