Winter can be surprisingly cold here in the San Francisco Bay Area (not as cold as Alaska, but the foggy marine air can chill you to the bone). It's the perfect season for watching movies, especially where plants are the movie stars. For the last several years we've been watching some excellent plant dye related documentaries by Maiwa Productions.
This winter I've chosen a documentary called Mushrooms for Color, about mushroom-dyeing pioneer, Miriam C. Rice (1918-2010). Rice was an artist who lived and worked all over the United States, and finally moved to Mendocino, California with her husband, Ray. She was an artist-in-resident at the Mendocino Art Center, and became fascinated with the idea of dyeing fibers with mushrooms.
The documentary describes her journey, first seeking information from the San Francisco Mycological Society and then foraging for mushrooms and experimenting with dyeing. She had dye pots bubbling all over the house. At first she just plunged into the process without keeping any notes or records. As she developed processes for mordanting and dyeing, she started keeping detailed records and developed a shorthand to record her findings. Rice discovered a broad palette of colors that could be produced from fungi, especially when dyeing protein fibers. In 1972, she published "Let's Start Dyeing with Mushrooms" (Mad River Press, Inc.). She shared her experience with other artists, scientists, and mycologists. She was more interested in the science of the color, than creating fiber art, but she soon developed an international following of fiber artists.
The documentary was made in 1988, and is still available, with caveats that some of the information may have been superseded by new discoveries. I was especially interested to see the many beautiful colors that can be produced from mushrooms and fungi, and to see the samples of dyed yarn. Since Rice collected in Northern California, she identified many dye sources that are readily available here in the Bay Area. She didn't just collect information, but shared it, building an international community of enthusiasts. Additionally, Rice realized that some mushrooms, especially Polypores can be used to make beautiful handcrafted paper that can be dyed with mushrooms (a second documentary describes this journey). To see both documentaries: https://youtu.be/o1Dn7GsBsmU?si=LkcoWYTMMSNGVLbt
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