Magazines - Tribal Art Winter 2010

By Jill D’Alessandro, curator at the department of textile arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco..

Introduction
For centuries, artisans have employed the technique of resist dyeing to embellish their textiles. To Dye For: A World Saturated in Color, an exhibition currently at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, draws from the permanent collection of the Fine Arts Museums and from key private Bay Area collections to explore the use of resist-dye methods from a broad range of cultures and historic periods. It takes an in-depth look at the practices in India, Japan, Indonesia, and Africa, where dyeing techniques are predominant in their textile traditions.
Resist-dye encompasses all dye processes in which a patterned surface is created by preventing dye from reaching specific areas of the cloth. To Dye For features a variety of examples of these methods, including tie-dye, stitch-resist, ikat (warp- or weft-resist dyeing), batik (wax-resist dyeing), and mordant-resist dyeing. Each of these techniques is discussed in more detail below.