Reading a botanical print
Outline, vein, colour and halo: how to look closely at an eco-print, and what each mark can tell you.
1 min read
An eco-print rewards slow looking. Up close, a single leaf print holds a surprising amount of information about the leaf, the cloth and the conditions inside the bundle.
The outline
Where a leaf lay flat and firm against the fabric, its edge tends to print sharply, every serration visible. A softer, blurred outline often means the leaf moved, or sat less tightly in the bundle.
The veins
Veins can print darker or lighter than the leaf around them. On some prints they appear as a pale network, on others as fine dark lines: the leaf's structure, drawn in colour.
The colour
Colour depends on the plant, the fabric and how the bundle was prepared and heated. The same kind of leaf can print in different colours on different cloths, which is one reason eco-printing is so endlessly varied.
Halos, ghosts and speckles
Around some leaves a soft halo of colour forms. Where layers of cloth touched inside the bundle, a fainter ghost of a leaf may appear. Small dots and speckles belong to the process too. None of these are mistakes; they are traces of how a print was made.
See these marks for yourself in the collection.
