Indigo Reduction Material Experiment

Beata Belogolovsky BFA Graphic Design

At the Dye Garden, we’ve conducted workshops to share our findings on different resist techniques when working with indigo, such as clay, stitch, and itajime resist. For these events, we work with both fermentation vats as well as 1-2-3 vats. Keeping the vats active has proven difficult, as the vat is very much alive and one can spend years mastering the craft. This experiment focuses on just that, as I wondered if I could test a few readily available reduction materials and see which would create the most saturated dye color, and whether the material could substitute fructose sugar or not.

It is recommended that one uses a high-reduction material such as sugar, which will help the vat to reduce quickly. One could also use dextrose, which is a simple sugar made from corn or wheat found in corn syrup, but the reduction may take longer. Pectin, which is a type of scratch found in lemon and orange rinds can also substitute for sugar, which I tested as a part of my experiment.

I used a 1-2-3 vat for its simplicity. As a refresher, the recipe for a 1-2-3 is as follows:

1 part Indigo (2-10 g/L)

2 parts Lime/Calcium hydroxide (4-20 g/L)

3 parts Reduction material (6-30 g/L)

Since I used pint-sized jars for my experiment, my measurements were 2g Indigo, 4g Calcium hydroxide, and 6g Reduction material.

I used a lemon, orange, mango, pear, and tomato as my chosen reduction material. To get a more concentrated reduction, one should use multiple of each, but since this was just a test I used only one.

Here I measured out the ingredients and simmered the reduction materials at 600F for a few minutes. To combine them, I filled the jar halfway with boiled water, mixed the strained reduction material into it, adde indigo, and lastly the calcium hydroxide. I then stirred and topped off the jar with more hot water.

One way to know that the vat is active is when “The Mother” or "Flower" forms. On the right side is a lighter flower, which indicates that the vat is weak.

Immediately after stirring, I could tell that a few of the vats were not activating. After 5 days however, the vats were looking more promising.

These are the results after 5 days of reduction. I used silk for the initial test and cotton for the second one. The tomato came out far more saturated than the rest, while the lemon, which I tested twice, came out looking the weakest. I suspect this is due to some acidity from the lemon itself. Overall this experiment proved helpful as we now know that tomato is a great reduction material!

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