The Studio Diary

Preparing for experiments

fabric mordanted

This week is largely about preparing fabric and paper with specific printing mordants - soaking them in a mix of aluminium potassium sulphate and ferrous sulphate which has been dissolved in acetic acid and neutralised with sodium carbonate and calcium carbonate. This is a mordant that is sometimes used when printing with plant pigments and I want to use it in a few different ways, manipulating the mordant to give different effects.

The moveable element is the amount of ferrous sulphate - the lower the amount the brighter the image, which I like, but I also like crisp edges which need a bit of iron.

But first the tedious bit, which is stacking up and labelling piles of paper and fabric so that when I actually have plant material I can work faster.