Hands-on Workshop: Natural Dyes from the Kitchen/Garden with Pamela H. Smith

Following Pamela's keynote, we will be experimenting with dyeing natural fibers using plant-based sources of dye harvested on the Farm. The workshop will include scouring and mordanting protein and cellulosic fibers and examining how the physical properties and preparation of fibers relate to hue, color fastness, etc. when used with different dye materials. Participants should wear/bring clothes they don’t mind getting dirty!

Pamela H. Smith, Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University, is founding Director of the Center for Science and Society and its cluster project the Making and Knowing Project (www.makingandknowing.org). Her books, including The Business of Alchemy (1994), The Body of the Artisan (2004), and From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World (2022), investigate craft and practice as a way of knowing. She has collaborated on edited volumes that treat the history of practice, embodied knowledge, and material culture. Other collaborations include the Making and Knowing Project’s multiyear creation of Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France (2020), immersion courses in traditional Thai weaving, human-natural interactions in the minescape, and interdisciplinary workshops. She is now collaborating on a new project on longue durée histories of socio-natural sites of pre-industrial industry.

Sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center and made possible by support from an anonymous donor honoring the Directorship of former SHC Director John Bender, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities