2/10/2024 0 Comments Indigo dyesOther traces of indigo appear in unexpected places through South Carolina’s Lowcountry. It’s one of the growers supplying Charleston textile studios such as CHI Design Indigo. Right: Indigo stalks are hung to dry at Ogee Farms on Johns Island, South Carolina. “During its heyday, the dye was brewed in vats as large as swimming pools,” Neale says. A historical marker spotlights two 14-by-14-foot brick basins where indigo would have been processed. Textile artists, moving away from polluting petroleum-based dyes, rediscovered the ancient plants.ĭespite the crop’s ubiquity in colonial times, the Otranto Plantation Indigo Vat, in Berkeley County, South Carolina, is one of the only tangible sites left behind. Books including The Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd, a novel about Eliza Lucas, spurred interest in its history. ![]() Then, about a decade ago, natural indigo started resurging. Most denim makers and other manufacturers turned to chemical dyes. “No one else would do it conditions were horrible.” Blue gold returns to the CarolinasĪfter American independence in 1776, Britain took its indigo business to India and U.S. “There’s a reason why enslaved labor was used,” says Jeff Neale, director of preservation and interpretation at Middleton Place, a circa-1675 Charleston-area plantation where rice and indigo once thrived. Skilled in botany, she had her father ship her some indigo seeds. In the 1730s, Eliza’s father, a lieutenant governor stationed in Antigua, put her in charge of the family’s three plantations (and 60 enslaved people) outside of Charleston. ( How Charleston is telling stories about enslaved Africans in a new way.)īut it wasn’t until 16-year-old Eliza Lucas (Pinckney) came along that the crop took off. The British attempted to grow it as early as 1607 in Jamestown, their first colony in Virginia. Revered by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans for its association with power, authority, and the sacred, indigo belongs to the pea family. Travelers can take artisan-led workshops on how to harvest and dye with the plant, and most of all, visit historic sites which explore the ugly past of this beautiful color. ![]() Though indigo disappeared in the American South after the Revolutionary War, it’s now making a comeback in and around Charleston.
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