The Drying Line

Indigo has to be fed. Madder needs the right water. Every natural dye house works to a timetable set by weather and fermentation, which is why the same recipe in Tokushima, Bamako and Kachchh gives three different families of colour.

Cloth is hung the way it is hung in the yard, at working height, in daylight, with the dip counts written beside it. Nothing is framed. Visitors are asked to touch the sample rail at the end of each run.

The final room holds the commercial reckoning: what these processes cost per metre, what the mills quote, and what the three houses have changed in order to keep going without lowering the wage.