Un bain de couleur au Forum de Lauris

Three days of natural colour immersion in Lauris 

Michel Garcia demonstrates the use of
Indonesian simplocos leaves as a mordant

Couleur Garance successfully organized an international professional Forum and a two day market week end on October 11 to 13 in Lauris. 

Dominique Cardon shared words of encouragement about this rich and informative conference day. Over one hundred professionals from a dozen countries attended  the Forum. See list of speakers HERE.


The conference morning program focused on natural dyes heritage topics. 

Yoshiko Wada, founder of the slow fiber studio in Berkeley US, talked about the art of Shibori design. 

Unicorn tapestry

Cecilia Aguirre from France explained her efforts to convince institutions to use natural colours in textile conservation. She presented probing examples including restauration work on the famous Unicorn tapestry at Cluny Museum in Paris. 


Founders of Bebali Foundation in Indonesia, William Ingham and Jean presented a truly socially responsible conservation project which involved piercing through the well guarded secrets of traditional mordant recipes. They rediscovered the aluminium rich (dead) leaves of the simplocos, a widely spread native rainforest tree and set up collection and retail outlets, and soon export, bringing economic activity to village women in Flores. Another good argument to preserve rainforest against commercial deforestation threats.

Colorful wool samples dyed with simplocos mordant

Madder dye bath

Afternoon talks included a report on experiments of indigo cultivation in Vaugines, a village near Lauris this summer. They learnt a lot from this first crop of persicaria tinctoria which has produced good quality indigo paste, commercialized by Couleur Garance Association.

Marie Noelle's soft
mauve scarf dyed
with mushrooms 

Every one was captivated by the colours Marie Noelle Vachez Granados obtained from dyeing with mushrooms. Astonishing colours!

Mushrooms are a new area for colours. Marie Marquet is undertaking scientific studies on this, see her samples below.

A novel way to look at mushrooms! 
Look but don't lick....










Congratulations to Martine, Soizik, staff and volunteers from Couleur Garance for this priceless series of events.