How To Color Mushrooms
Make the rainbow by learning how to dye with mushrooms. In today's episode, we welcome Alissa Allen, the founder of Mycopigments. The Mushroom Color Atlas features beautiful botanical illustrations and clear instructions on how to find and positively identify more than two dozen color-filled mushroom species in the wild.
Join artist, mycophile, and educator Julie Beeler in the forest and in her studio as she shows you how to create vivid dyes and pigments from mushrooms. We asked Julie Beeler, founder of the Mushroom Color Atlas, to dye some of our wool gauze with these mushrooms and she got lovely results! These recipes are courtesy of Julie Beeler's experiments. Your results may differ.
Julie also made lake pigments with the exhausted dye baths and created watercolors with the reclaimed pigments. Cortinarius semisanguines (Surprise Web Cap) The wool gauze. How to Dye with Lobster Mushrooms aka Hypomyces lactifluorum Found in many farmers markets in the fall, this dye source is highly colour sensitive to changes in pH to give an incredible range of colours including orange, peach, pink to purple.
Mycopigments Exploring regional mushroom and lichen dye palettes Welcome to the world of Mycopigments Mycopigments is a term I coined when I started dyeing with mushrooms back in 1998. At the time, it seemed like the most obvious way to describe dyes made specifically from fungi. Many mushrooms are "dye duds," including most brightly-colored species (for example, Russula species are terrible dyers).
Thankfully, the amazing diversity of mushrooms means that you can produce almost any color imaginable. The Dyer's Polypore (Phaeolus schweinitzii) produces oranges, yellows, and greens. Learn how to naturally dye using wild mushrooms with my very special guest, Dorothy Beebee -- my Mom! She has 50 years of natural dye experience, illustrated the original book "Let's Try Mushrooms.
Dyeing with Mushrooms I created the Mushroom Color Atlas as a resource and reference so you can explore the chromatic universe of fungi through the spectrum of colors naturally produced by dye mushrooms. But it is also the start of a journey and a point of departure, introducing you to the kaleidoscopic fungi kingdom and our connection to it. What are the benefits of using mushroom-based natural dyes? Using mushroom-based natural dyes offers several benefits, including sustainability, eco-friendliness, and unique color palettes.
Mushroom dyes are a renewable and biodegradable resource, and their production can help to reduce waste and support sustainable forestry practices. Join me in the sustainable art of Lobster Mushroom dyeing! Here's a step.