Palm Springs in Three Visits

I'm back from my annual trip to Southern California to meet up with my folks and search for spring wildflowers. We usually travel in late March for the best chance of seeing flowers but, due to unusual circumstances, we weren't able to meet until late April. This year was a "super bloom" year because of the spring rains, but I had accepted the fact that the desert and hills would be velvety brown and the blooms long gone. I was fine with that, because the best part for me is the chance to hang out with my parents, explore our favorite haunts, and enjoy their zest for life. Turns out, I got to enjoy both!

Palm Springs exit

Heavy winter and spring rains had closed several key roads, including parts of the Palms-to-Pines Highway, and access to Whitewater Preserve and Bautista Canyon. This meant missing  some of our favorite outings, but we adapted quickly. We visited Palm Springs on three separate occasions (giving us a chance to savor the mid-20th century experience).

Snow topped Mount San Jacinto and wind turbines on the desert floor

We typically stop at the Tramway Gas Station visitor center, originally a gas station that was designed by Albert Frey and Robson Chambers and built in 1965. The roof is a "hyperbolic parabolic of steel I-beams and corrugated metal roofing supported by steel tubular pillars." It's an iconic landmark for your entry into Palm Springs, and located at the base of the road leading to the tram up Mount San Jacinto. They have a great assortment of information about Palm Springs, books on mid-20th century architecture and style, souvenirs, and a kiosk for buying tickets for Aqua Caliente Indian Canyons.

Tramway Gas Station

John W. Hilton's "Enchantment of Sunrise"
(1960, from the Christiansen Collection of 20th Century California Art) 

John Anthony Conner's "Dawn at Palm Springs"
(1935)

We spent a pleasant afternoon exploring the Palm Springs Art Museum and immersing ourselves in the contemporary art exhibits. My favorite is still the small collection of California Impressionist and old west paintings. A few are typically on display, but not nearly enough in my opinion. The paintings capture the light and atmosphere of the desert and the sweeping expanses of land before it became so developed and congested. We lounged in the two sculpture gardens, enjoying the breeze and shade in the 101 degrees afternoon!

Enjoying shade in the Palm Springs Art Museum sculpture garden

Alive!, by Jeffrey Gibson and Aaron Hansen (from Desert X, 2017)

Shady sculpture garden

We also visited the Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture and Design Center (a first time visit for all of us). We saw the special exhibit on Hugh Kaptur (1931 - ) called "Organic Desert Architecture". I had a chance to study the architectural drawing for "Firehouse 4", including the landscape design and plant list. Kaptur is still working in the Palm Springs area.

Palm Springs Architecture Museum

Hugh Kaptur: Firehouse #4

Landscape design for Firehouse #4

We ate at Maracas Cantina a couple of times (one of our favorite Mexican restaurants). They have delicious food, attentive staff, generous Margaritas, and patio seating with a great vantage point for watching people. Plus they are right across from See's candy, where we purchased an assortment of favorite chocolates for dessert. We got in on the Thursday night Villagefest and joined in strolling the booths, and sitting to watch the crowds and listen to the street performers. We learned later that our daughter-in-law from Seattle was in town for a destination bachelorette party the same day, and did the stroll later in the evening!

Sharing a Margarita at Maracas Cantina

Margarita at Maracas Cantina (three straws!)

Enjoying the street fair across from Maracas Cantina

Another new experience was shopping at the Angel View Thrift Store. A neighbor recommended it for the quality of the items. We had fun combing through the books, videos, and vintage clothes (notable were the Lucite high-heeled shoes, tulle party dresses of the past, and men's button down dress shirts). 

We were surprised at the construction going on - a new condo complex on the outskirts of town, and several new building or renovation projects on the main drag running through town. I was pleased to see they are keeping with the mid-century modern theme that is so iconic for Palm Springs.

Dye Project: Black Walnuts

We are finally ready for our first dye project! We've learned about some of the key historical plant dyes, assembled our equipment for dyeing with plants, and learned the importance of mordants and fixatives for bonding the dye to plant fibers. For our first dye project we'll be using the hulls of black walnuts (Junglans nigra) to dye white cotton dish towels.





I was fortunate to harvest black walnuts from a neighbor's tree in Seattle while visiting our son, daughter-in-law, and Mako the Alaskan husky last summer. The hulls are a beautiful green when they fall from the tree, but they produce lovely shades of brown dye.

Black Walnuts harvested in Seattle

Since we were travelling, I peeled the hulls with a vegetable peeler, froze the peels in small plastic zip-lock bags, and labeled them clearly in case TSA had questions about them. I had no problems transporting the frozen hulls, and popped the bags into the freezer as soon as we got home, until I was ready to use them.

Peel the soft hulls with a vegetable peeler

Since walnut hulls contain tannins, there is no need to treat the fabric with a mordant. Pretreating the fabric with a mordant such as alum could change the shades of brown produced, so it would be interesting to experiment using a mordant. But for my first project I chose to see what happens naturally.

Simmer the hulls in water to extract the dye

I used my trusty Coleman camp stove set up outside on the patio to extract the dye. I used about a gallon of water for the hulls of 25-30 walnuts, but continued to add water to cover as the hulls simmered. After boiling for an hour or so, I poured the mixture through cheese cloth to strain out the hulls and then returned the dye to two pots of water. I wanted to dye six dish towels, three in each pot, so thought the extra room might yield better results with less streaking.

Strain the dye through cheese cloth

I immersed the dish towels in the boiling dye pots, reduced the heat, and let the towels simmer for a couple of hours. I let the towels soak over night in the dye bath to deepen the color. The next day I rinsed the towels thoroughly. This step took lots of water, and is a concern if you live in a place like the San Francisco Bay Area, which can be prone to drought. One possibility for a serious dyer would be to harvest water during the rainy season.

Simmer the towels in the dye bath, then soak overnight

Rinse the towels until the water runs clear

Finally, I ran the towels through the washing machine to make sure they were color fast, and let them air dry again. The towels have retained their color for many months now, so the natural tannins of the walnut hulls make an effective mordant. You can purchase colorless tanninc acid powder to use as a mordant for other dye projects, which is probably worth looking into.

Let the towels air dry

This was a successful first project and a lot of fun. It's quite satisfying to go through all the steps of gathering equipment, harvesting the dye stuff, extracting the dye, and then dyeing the fabric. In this case the resulting shade of brown is very pleasing.

The finished product

Search for Dyes: Pehr Kalm

This year we are revisiting our Linnaeus Apostles, who were sent out into the world from the University of Sweden, Uppsala in the 1700s to gather plant specimens, name and classify them using the binomial naming system, and identify plants that could help Sweden attain economic independence. This time we are looking at their efforts through the lens of textiles and plant dyes, with writer Viveka Hansen, author of Textilia Linnaeana: Global 18th Century Textile Traditions & Trade, as our guide.

Pehr Kalm (1716-1779) visited Finland and Russia as a student, and later traveled to England for six months, and then to the East Coast of America and Canada. His notes and diaries make many observations about textiles and textile dyeing, and show his special interest in how fibers were extracted from flax, hemp, cotton, and wool.

Kalm described sassafras (Sassafras officinale) as producing an orange dye.
Illustration from Koehler's Medicinal Plants
(published before 1923 and public domain in the United States)

During his University years (1740-1747), Kalm worked for his sponsor, Baron Sten Carl Bielke (a friend of Linnaeus), to manage Bielke's trial cultivation at Lofstad, and to make scientific trips during the summer. Botany was the main focus of the trips, but Kalm also sought to learn how locals used the plants. He and other Apostles wrote pamphlets and gave lectures, promoting the use of domestic plants for dying.

During their six months in England, while arranging for passage to America, Kalm and his assistant, Lars Jungstrom, researched how people lived, used natural resources, and harvested and processed wool from sheep.

In North America Kalm and Jungstrom, travelled throughout the colonies of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, and the southern part of Canada. Their notes include observations about local plants used for dyeing, for example:

Color	Plant	Description
Browns	Alder (Betula alnus) White oak (Quercus alba) Black walnut (Juglans nigra)	Bark Bark (color fast) Hulls and bark (color fast)
Yellows	Canadian goldenrod (Solidago canadensis)	Flowers (works best for wool, with alum)
Reds	American pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)	Ripe berries (beautiful color, but fades) Fresh roots (was used by Native Americans as well)

Kalm visited the botanist John Bartram (1699-1777) on multiple occasions in the Philadelphia area between 1748-1751. He met Mrs. Bartram who was knowledgeable about dyeing. She told Kalm about dyeing with sassafras tree bark, which gives wool a beautiful color fast orange color. Her technique was to use urine as the mordant instead of alum, and to boil the dye in a cauldron of ore instead of iron. He also learned from her that a color fast red could be achieved with the bark from alder and spruce pine, and that brown wool was best dyed with bark from the black walnut tree.

Kalm also interviewed older settlers who had learned about dyeing from the Native Americans in their youth. By the time Kalm and Jungstrom were in the area, the natives had been driven out, so the information he gathered was second hand. But they learned that the natives had used dyes for grass mats, leather, and porcupine quills. Kalm also reported on saw-wort (Serratula tinctoria), and other yellow, red, orange, and black sources, and on indigo.

In 1763, Kalm and colleague Esaisis Holdkeg (1738-1798) published a dissertation on "North American Dye Plants", which summarized findings from America and Canada.

Learn More

Textilia Linnaeana: Global 18th Century Textile Traditions & Trade by Viveka Hansen, fifth volume in the Mundus Linnae Series, issued by the IK Foundation & Company (London 2017). See pages 31-44.