A visit to a village in West Bengal where Khadi thread dyeing is done. (February 2025)
Although it is the same workshop where chemical dyeing is done, natural dyeing is also done in a different space.
A dye craftsman's note: Difficult colors such as gray and beige are difficult to reproduce, and it is customary to end up with a different color every year, but single colors are relatively stable.
However, the colour of the Indian madder dye they use there is such a deep red that I asked them repeatedly if it might be alizarin, but they insisted it was madder, so I decided to go and see it in person.
Although it is written as Indian madder, it has been thoroughly refined, so it looks like alizarin. Of course, it is possible that it is 100% Indian madder refined.
Alizarin is a natural pigment found in the roots of the madder plant and is chemically synthesized. It has been used for over 100 years and is now one of the traditional dyes. Alizarin has the advantage of stable color development.
However, when Ajurac craftsmen use madder, they are clearly using the crushed root, and are very conscious about distinguishing it from alizarin.
This is common in India. In most cases, even if they say indigo, they are actually using synthetic indigo. You can usually tell by looking at the color, but in many cases the people using it have never even seen natural indigo, and dye suppliers sell alizarin as madder and synthetic indigo as indigo. The dyers themselves are not trying to deceive buyers, but it is unfortunate that the overall situation makes them seem unreliable.
After this, our Delhi team flew to Jaipur with our Bengali production team to visit some more reliable dye shops who spoke the language of this dye.