Botanical And Natural Dyes

The forgotten colors

A journey into natural dyes

Color came from life itself

Dyeing before factories, formulas, and synthetic pigments

Natural dyes were coaxed from roots, leaves, bark, minerals, and even insects — each hue carrying meaning, medicine, and story. Across the world, color was not decoration but status, ceremony, and power.

One of the most prized colors in history was Tyrian Purple, extracted from the hypobranchial gland of the Murex brandaris sea snail that lives along the Mediterranean coast.

It took as many as 250,000 snails to produce enough dye for a single royal robe. The process was slow, pungent, and sacred — a ritual of transformation where the milky secretion turned green, then deep violet when kissed by sunlight.

Archaeological remains of purple-dye workshops in Tyre, Sidon, and Crete reveal mountains of crushed shells — the ruins of an industry that perfumed empires. For centuries, Tyrian Purple was more valuable than gold, worn only by emperors and priests.

But humanity’s relationship with natural color began long before that. The oldest known dyed textiles, discovered in Henan Province, China, date back over 4,000 years, colored with madder, indigo, and turmeric — the same trio of plants still used today in Bali.

From the Mediterranean snails to the rivers of Asia

The search for color: the search for life itself

By the 18th century, another pigment — Indigofera tinctoria, or true indigo — had taken its place as the world’s most coveted dye. Indigo was the second most valuable traded good on the Silk Road after rice, known as “blue gold.” It colored the fabrics of kingdoms from Persia to India and across the Indonesian archipelago.

Then, in 1856, a young British chemist named William Henry Perkin accidentally created the first synthetic dye — Mauveine, or “Perkin’s Purple” — while searching for a cure for malaria. Within a few decades, synthetic colors replaced centuries of botanical knowledge.

With them disappeared an entire way of knowing — the spiritual, ecological, and cultural relationship between human and plant.

At RIMMBA, our work is an act of remembering.

Each piece we dye, each leaf and root we stir, is part of a much older conversation — one that honors what color once meant: connection, ceremony, and the living intelligence of nature.

🔬 How Natural Dyes Are Made

Ancestral craft and applied chemistry

Plant pigment is extracted from leaves, bark, roots, and seeds through soaking, fermentation, or gentle heat. While many botanical dyes rely on hot-water extraction, some of the world’s oldest systems — such as indigo vat dyeing and mud dyeing — use microbes, minerals, tannins, and controlled fermentation instead of heat. Indigo is not extracted with heat. Instead, it is fermented in a living vat, where natural sugars and alkaline minerals create a reduced, oxygen-free environment. The gentle warmth comes from microbial activity — not fire. When lifted into air, the cloth turns blue through oxidation. Mud dye develops through the layering of tannin-rich plants and iron-rich mud. Repeated cycles allow the tannins to react with iron, gradually building depth and tone.

🧪 Mordants

Fixing the colour

Mordants help colour form a stable chemical bond with the fibre so the dye remains wash-fast, light-fast, and long-lasting. Mordants can be plant-derived or refined mineral salts. As the Canadian dye house MAIWA explains:

“Mordants are used in combination with natural dyes to make the colours lightfast and washfast. Some mordants, like alum, prepare the cloth to receive the dye and do not add their own colour; others, like myrobalan, tannin and iron, will impart a colour to the cloth and can be used to significantly alter the colour of a dye.”
— MAIWA

Indonesia has a long tradition of using 100% plant-based mordants, particularly within community dyeing cultures. As Threads of Life shares:

“We use time-tested, colour-fast traditional Indonesian dye recipes using plant dyes and plant mordants, and without synthetic modifiers.”
— Threads of Life

At RIMMBA, we work across two distinct natural dye systems. For exclusive drops, we practice 100% traditional Indonesian dyeing — hand-processed, using indigenous mordants like Symplocos leaf, rooted in ancestral methods and ritual rhythm. Alongside this, we use a modern natural dye model with our Bali dye house partners. This approach uses alum sulphate, controlled processes, and washing machines to ensure consistency, durability, and scalability. They are fundamentally different.

🎨 Modifiers

Shifting the colour tone

Modifiers adjust colour after dyeing by changing the chemical environment of the fibre. Minerals like iron deepen and “sadden” tones — turning yellow to olive, or red to plum.

Acidity and alkalinity also shift hue: vinegar or lemon can brighten warm tones, while chalk or wood ash can cool or deepen colour. Some materials, such as iron and tannin, can act as both mordants and modifiers — meaning they help fix colour and simultaneously reshape its tone. Modifiers demonstrate the reactive, living nature of botanical colour — a spectrum shaped by pH, minerals, plant chemistry, and time.

♻️ Sustainability

Controversy in Natural Dyeing

Natural dyes are often described as “sustainable”, but the truth is more complex.

Botanical dyeing is not automatically low-impact simply because the pigment comes from plants. Like any textile process, it carries environmental responsibilities that must be faced with honesty, not marketing language.

Natural dyes involves chemistry too. Many traditional mordants and auxiliaries — such as tannins, iron, and alum — can alter soil composition and affect microbial life when disposed of carelessly. Even “natural” substances, when concentrated or repeated, can have consequences.

Indigo dye vats operate in an alkaline environment, often reaching elevated pH levels depending on the recipe. If indigo wastewater released untreated, it can shift soil alkalinity and disturb the delicate balance of garden ecosystems.

At RIMMBA, we take this seriously.

We neutralize pH before disposal, reuse dye baths wherever possible, and remain mindful of how our small garden dyeing practice interacts with the land around it.

Sustainability, for us, means accountability — not assuming that “natural” equals harmless, but learning to work with nature responsibly, chemistry included.

Water Use

The Reality of Natural Dye Volume

We are in a global water crisis, and textile production plays a role. Botanical dyeing uses water for extraction, soaking, and rinsing — even when reused thoughtfully.

Eco-print — where leaves and flowers are pressed directly into the fibre — is arguably the most water-efficient natural dye practice, because it eliminates extraction baths and reduces rinsing. It is slow craft at its purest.

Natural colour is beautiful and alive — but not impact-free. Responsible dyeing acknowledges what it uses, not just what it avoids.

Sourcing

Land & Plant Use

At RIMMBA, we dye in rhythm with nature. As seasonal dyers, we work with what the land offers, when it offers it — sourcing many colours from our Ubud garden and local growers. Operating in small batches allows us to dye slowly and only from what is naturally available.

We grow and gather plants such as marigold, mango leaf, mangosteen, annatto, and onion skins, following the natural cycles of growth and rest. We also work with by-products and food waste — including avocado pits, rambutan skins and mangosteen skins — giving new life to materials that would otherwise be discarded. This practice supports circularity and avoids unnecessary pressure on agricultural land.

Limitations of Natural Dye

Differences in botanical Colours

A key limitation of natural dyeing is that botanical colours can soften and shift over time. Unlike synthetic dyes engineered for permanence, plant pigments are alive — they respond to sunlight, wear, and the natural oils of the skin. Rather than treating this as a flaw, we honour it as part of the beauty: it develops a gentle patina, becoming more personal to the wearer. This is the nature of living pigment, and we choose it for its harmony with the body, the land, and our commitment to avoiding harsh chemical dye residues.

Limitations of Scaling Natural Dyeing

There are also limitations in scaling natural dye production responsibly. Scaling natural dye responsibly has limits. Consistency requires stable plant supply, controlled mordants, wastewater care, and skilled hands — it cannot be rushed without compromise. At RIMMBA, we scale intentionally, working with trusted dye houses and prioritising traceability, craft, and ecological responsibility over volume.

🌸 The Colors of Bali

Color as a sacred language

A dialogue between earth, sky, and spirit

Each hue holds direction, energy, and divine association. Together they form the Panca Warna — the Five Sacred Colors that guide ritual life across the island.

From temple banners to ceremonial textiles, these colors express Tri Hita Karana, the philosophy of harmony between the divine, the human, and the natural realms.

🌺 Bali’s Ancient Palette

Organic Dyes in Bali

Color extracted from nature with balinese traditions.

🔴 Red — The Blood of the Earth

From Morinda citrifolia (mengkudu) comes the red of blood and creation. An inscription from 883 AD lists red and indigo dyers as tax-exempt — sacred professions.Source : ATS In Bali and Sumba, red represents Brahma, fire, fertility, and the life force of Ibu Pertiwi.

🔵 Blue — The Breath of Sky and Water

Born from the leaves of Indigofera tinctoria and Strobilanthes cusia, indigo transforms from green to blue through air and water.

In Tenganan Pegringsingan, indigo is so sacred it cannot be fermented within the village walls; it must be prepared beyond the temple boundary and brought back only when ready.

Blue belongs to Siwa, the god of transformation — the masculine principle, representing sky, breath, and consciousness. Together with mengkudu’s red, it forms the balance of earth and heaven, body and soul.

🟡 Yellow — The Sun’s Blessing

From batu pare (yellow ochre of Ketewel) and turmeric roots comes the color of the sun — Mahadeva’s hue of wisdom, prosperity, and light.

Embodying warmth, clarity, and abundance.

⚫ Black — The Ancestors’ Shade

Traditionally dyed from camplung fruit — as documented in the Balinese natural-dye film The Colour of Bali (2022) — black is

the colour of protection, grounding, and everything that lives beyond the visible world. In temple cloths, black marks the realm of Wisnu, guardian of the northern direction, water, and preservation — stabilising, steady, and protective. A shade that holds the presence of those who came before.

⚪ White — The Breath of Spirit

Made from tulang babi guling (powdered pigs bone) and river clay, white signifies purity, light, and renewal.

It belongs to Iswara, the god of air and clarity — the color of balance and awakening that unites all others.

✨ The Taksu of Color

Balinese spirituality in colors

The religious beauty of balinese pigments

In Balinese belief, true beauty carries taksu — the unseen spiritual radiance that gives life to a creation.

The same sacred energy flows through the natural pigments used in Barong masks, Wayang Kulit puppets, Kamasan paintings, and merajan (family shrines).

The red from mengkudu brings courage; the black from camplung anchors protection; the white bone invites purity.

When artisans paint, carve, or dye with these plant-based colors, they do not just decorate — they awaken spirit.

As Balinese say: “Taksu datang kalau hati bersih” — Taksu comes when the heart is pure.

🌏 Natural Dyes in Indonesia

Ancestral threads across the Archipelago

Beyond Bali, Indonesia holds one of the world’s richest dye legacies — from Java’s riverbanks to Sumba’s limestone plains.

In Sumba, women still dye with morinda and indigo under strict taboos: men may not enter the dye house, and rituals precede each vat. As documented by Threads of Life, the vats are treated as living spirits — prayers are whispered, and the first cloth becomes an offering to the ancestors. With no written scripture, Sumba’s cosmology is woven into cloth — “the textile is the text” (The Rahayu Project). Motifs like the kaheli crocodile and nunga serpent record genealogy, myth, and the balance between seen and unseen worlds.

In Java, soga brown comes from tingi bark and tegeran wood. In Toraja, rust reds and deep blacks mark lineage and the journey to the afterlife.

Across the archipelago, colour is not decoration — it is belonging, cosmology, and memory written in plant, soil, and fibre.

🌸 Traditions of the natural dyes

Every hue is an act of cultural revival

Through the rhythm of boiling water, fermenting leaves, and patient stirring, we reconnect to an older way of living — one that honours slowness, reciprocity, and respect for the land.

To wear naturally dyed silk is to wear a fragment of memory — a color born from the meeting of sunlight, soil, and sacred water.

It is to carry a story that once travelled along trade routes, across islands and generations.

🌸 RIMMBA is not just about fashion.

The return of color to its original form

Color as prayer, as medicine, as art

While Bali’s dye heritage is rooted in sacred plants like mengkudu and mengnila, at RIMMBA we also celebrate everyday alchemy — the colours drawn from our kitchens and gardens.

Marigold, avocado seed, mangosteen peel, hibiscus, mango leaf — each transforms into living colour once thought fleeting.

These are not royal dyes of ancient looms, but modern botanical expressions born from curiosity and reverence for the Earth.

Through them, we continue the lineage — turning local abundance into wearable art.