Isabella Whitworth

Viral Shawl

£180

Naturally dyed mulberry silk

I have been trying to source a more satisfying source of silk than commercial, sparkling white, smooth and ‘perfect’ cloth imported from China.  Since autumn 2020 I have been working on mulberry silk, a handwoven ‘heritage’ cloth from India whose export and sale is supporting handweavers in West Bengal. Slubs and imperfections are part of its intrinsic beauty. Its natural colour is a pale creamy yellow.

It has been a challenge to adapt to this deliciously lustrous cloth. I am using natural dyes, and I have had to relearn, for instance, the percentage of mordant required (mordant is calculated as a percentage of the cloth weight). It is not possible to heat the pot in which waxed cloth is dyed above a certain temperature - or the wax will melt. Cold dyeing, when waxed cloth is kept in the dye pot for several days, works well. But over time dye tends gradually to seep behind the wax, to the detriment of the pattern or design. In order to encourage dye to bond more quickly at a low temperature a stronger percentage mordant is necessary.

The shawl was first dyed a strong yellow using locally-sourced walnut leaves, and wax and madder dye were worked in layers so that a pattern built up in different tones of the same colour. The design of this shawl is loosely based on forms of virus -which are helpful and unhelpful to the human race - and frequently look very pretty through a microscope.