RIGHT Where the dyeing story starts - it is hard to believe that this stunning blue dye comes from this lush green Japanese indigo plant.
FAR RIGHT Solid evidence - a lump of Indian indigo. BELOW LEFT An intricately woven piece of dyed material with metallic fringing. BELOW CENTRE Jenny dyes fibrous paper by using the "clamp resist" method, where the folded paper is held by matching pairs of wooden clamps.
BELOW RIGHT This Egyptian cotton twill has been beautifully patterned with the stitch-resist method.
There are skirts and jackets with superbly embroidered sleeves from the south west of China, ingenious Japanese cotton carrying squares (furoshiki) with reinforced quilted corners for tying to a pole, inky blue burnished jackets whose gleaming finish is achieved by rubbing with a. burnishing stone, and glazed indigo cloth with beaten tin strips embroidered on it.

"One of my rarest pieces is a padded Japanese fireman's helmet made from indigo-dyed cotton," says jenny. "The flap was pulled down over the face and a long flap protected the neck and back of the head. The fireman would wear a matching padded jacket and be drenched with water before tackling a blaze. It dates from the late 19th or early 20th century."

Jenny has visited dyers around the world since she discovered the work of indigo dyers in the Yemen, where the method had been used for more than 2,000 years and is now on the verge of extinction. It was her ensuing PhD thesis entitled Indigo in the Arab World that led the British Museum to ask her to write a book on indigo worldwide. Having recently exhibited in Cornwall, plans for a larger exhibition are now in the pipeline.

"I didn"t intend to be a collector," Jenny explains. "It just grew from my visiting dyers and finding examples of ancient traditions. I used to do batik when I was in Jordan, and I set up a studio in Tunisia and exhibited there. When we came back to England I found that I was hooked on dyeing. Indigo is very universal, you can dye anything," she says.

"I make the vats in summer, when I can be outdoors, and prepare the fabrics in winter- I use calico, cotton, silk, and wool for weaving, and I cover cushions with old peanut sacks that have been tied and dyed," she says. "I have two very rare conical indigo dye-extraction pots from Oman, but I actually use a big plastic dustbin. The strange thing is that the dye in the vat is not blue. It's a murkv vellow-green colour.


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