learning the art of bogolan

Von am 17. Feb. 2009


I’ve learned about the malian bogolan -the art of painting and dyeing with mud, using (mostly) only local plants for obtaing the colours.

Some time ago, I were experimenting with dyeing fabrics with (bio-) food and natural colours. (Unfortunately without much success…)
So my joy was great when I heard about the malian (west-africa) bogolan -the art of painting and dyeing with mud, using (mostly) only local plants for obtaing the colours.
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I visited a collective of bogolan-artists in Segou and was shown some tricks:::
Mud-painting; using mud as base for the paint, with red bark for the chocolat-colour and coals for the black. To produceseries of patterns the artists use cut-out stencils and toothbrushes as brushes. I had to try, of course… using a pattern symbolising “king”..
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I was a bit sceptic.. not sure if the colour would really stay on in wash – but after washing the mud out of the textile the colours appeared even brighter!
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(okay, maybe not 40°C with omo in the washingmachine.. i’ll have to try when i come home..)
Natural dyeing; local plants are used for dyeing the fabrics; red bark from a local tree, numerous other plants I didnt understand the name of (..my french is not so steady..). The yellow-green colour is from the leaves(spice) spanish people put in all the food (at least all the spanish people I ever lived with…)
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This green is a mix of the mentioned leaves and indigo -but when I ask which plant the indigo-blue comes from, the only answer is “powder”.. it seems it used to be a natural way to create blue though, since the colour is used so much in the traditional cloths.
(the white? –bleach!! :) )