Traditional Bong Seon Hwa dyes

photos: 100.nate.com

1. Gather a large handful of bong seon hwa leaves and another handful of the flowers. Discard the stalks and any discoloured petals.

2. Before you start, cut some plastic into 3×4-inch squares, one for each finger. Also, cut some string into 6-inch lengths.

3. In a pestle and mortar, grind a rounded tablespoon of alum into a fine powder. Slowly add the leaves and petals, grinding and mashing them to a fine paste.

4. Using tweezers or a pointed metal nail file, place enough mixture to completely cover the fingernail. Take a plastic square and wrap the bong seon hwa covered nail. Secure the plastic with a 6-inch piece of string by wrapping it around the finger several times and then tying it.

5. Your fingertips will also be dyed; however, this will wear off after a few days. If you really don’t want orange fingers as well as nails, you can put some oil or Vaseline on the skin surrounding your nails.

Serpent in Lincoln park zoo

Photographed by CHA

Most snake skin colors result from pigments, although Asian sunbeam snakes (Xenopeltis) and some other species have microscopic structures that make their scales iridescent. Some boas, colubrids, and vipers become lighter at night and darken during the day. With age, melanin deposits in the skin often obscure the bright patterns of juvenile snakes; examples of such ontogenetic color shifts include several pitvipers and colubrids that are blotched or bright red as juveniles, then uniformly dark-colored as adults. Color changes sometimes vary geographically within a species, perhaps associated with changes in habitat and defensive responses: As adults, Black Ratsnakes (Elaphe o. obsoleta) are uniformly dark and Yellow Ratsnakes (E. o. quadrivittata) have black stripes on a light background, whereas all juveniles of that species are light brown or gray with a dorsal pattern of dark blotches. Adult Western Rattlesnakes (Crotalus viridis) are contrastingly blotched like their young over most of the range of that species, but some full-grown Arizona Black Rattlesnakes (C. v. cerberus) are sooty black with small golden flecks.

Adult color patterns are constant in most snake species, at least within a population. Well-known polymorphisms, however, include striped versus banded Common Kingsnakes (Lampropeltis getula); striped, banded, and unicolored Prairie Groundsnakes (Sonora semiannulata); and red versus gray or brown estuarine species in Asia (Dog-faced Watersnake [Cerberus rynchops]) and the United States (Salt Marsh Watersnake [Nerodia clarkii]). Although popular with hobbyists, free-living snakes with truly aberrant colors and patterns are easily visible to predators and thus rare. At least in Brazil, most naturally occurring albino snakes are either nocturnal or burrowers, therefore less likely to be seen by enemies, or are venomous and thus especially capable of defense.

Molting (shedding, ecdysis) in reptiles results from cyclical changes in the underlying skin structure; the end result--a shiny new skin--might facilitate growth, renew tissue abraded during locomotion or otherwise damaged, remove ectoparasites, and maximize chemical communication. Most squamates molt in small, ragged pieces over a period of days or weeks, but alligator lizards, amphisbaenians, and snakes typically shed their skins in one piece. Intervals between ecdysis range from a few weeks to several months and vary with temperature, health, growth, and feeding. For several days prior to molting the eyes are clouded gray or blue by fluid between the old and newly formed spectacles; snakes in that condition are usually inactive and sometimes remain hidden. Among those I found "in the blue," a Northern Cat-eyed Snake (Leptodeira septentrionalis) was hidden in a bromeliad, two Terciopelos (Bothrops asper) remained in burrows, several Bushmasters (Lachesis muta) were coiled on the forest floor, and a Lowland Bush Viper (Atheris squamiger) was resting on a branch.

word source : www.nytimes.com

SNAKES: The evolution of mystery in nature by Harry W. Greene, University of California Press

Native american dyes - Red Onion

source : www.ieoonions.com

It is known as Christopher Columbus first brought onions to north america, but the truth is that onions were already growing in wilderness even before puritans brought onions in Mayflower. The native americans usually ate them raw, cooked, and even used them as spices or vegetables and other various ways. It was also used as a syrup, or toys(which I don't really understand), and ultimately in Natural dyes.

The natural dye processes of native americans provided themselves colors to clothings. It also provided colors to their hairs or body paintings that symbolized their tribe.

Red Onion was part of their sources in natural dyes. red onions DO provide colors to the fabrics, but it provides relatively lighter than other kinds of onions such as brown onions which provides the richest color among all the onion skin dyes.

Indian Yellow

source : www.utrechtart.com

The deep, dark, and strongly shiny yellow which is impossible to immitate,
That was the Indian Yellow. It was discovered in fifteenth century by Roger Dewhurst, the painter. In India, it was the color indicating the rank of a ruler.


Unlike ovarious other yellows that had lead, arsenic, or cadmium in them which are poisonous, indian yellow was one that was pure without poisonous chemicals.


The noble Indian yellow's source was ironically cow's urine. But what was worse was the fact that those urines were from sick cows. What they did to get the cows sick was absolutely intentional, only in order to get the yellow pigment they wanted.


The cows were fed with Mango leaves which caused diseases to them. So the England Animal protection regulations prohibited the action of collecting those yellows. But people still longed for the noble yellow because they couldn't find any other yellows that replaced the indian yellow.

The first word we need to know is "Scattering". It is a phenomenon of certain wave passing through an obstacle and proceeding in several different ways. It is known as the shorter the wave, the wider it scatters.

In a visible rays, blue scatters better while the red doesn't since its wave length is longer than that of the blue's

One more thing we need to know, we only see the light that comes directly through our eyes. We'll never be able to see the sunlight passing through the atmosphere in different ways from our eyes. Now this theory also applies to the fact that we are only capable of seeing the light of the laser pointer when it's pointing directly at us. (the reason why we can see it's path even though it's pointing somewhere else is because the light of the laser pointer is "Scattered" by dirts or smokes in the air)

Back to the main point, we cannot see the sunlight passing through the atmosphere and going outside of the earth. If scattering effect doesn't exist, the color of daylight would be black. However, parts of the lights that bounced back out of the earth(especially blue) would scatter back towards our eyes again caused by their shortest wave lengths taking effect. That is why the sky looks blue.

During the sunrise or sunset, the altitude of the sun is relatively very low. To emphasize more on this, the sunlight passes very long way through the atmosphere. Through this process, blue gets scattered away unlike during the day and reds remain a lot during the sunset. Therefore, the sun would look more red resulting the sky change its clothes in red also. Of course the color of the sky very far away from us would still be blue.

view from the sky during the sunset. above it is still blue.



words & photos by CHA

Dye with coffee

Pretty simple process without any mordants.

Color was straightforward resulting in solid brown.

Red Cabbage

Red Cabbage with Ferric Sulfate

Red Cabbage with Cupric Chloride

Red Cabbage with Aluminum Potassium

Red Cabbage with Cream of Tartaric

Red Cabbage with Cobalt

and several others that I missed to document..

RESULTS.