I prefer to call this project botanical printing—that describes it perfectly—but others call it ecoprinting. I’m not sure how “eco” it is with the amount of plastic that some people use. I have plastic on the table and I roll the scarves in plastic before steaming but I reuse all the plastic over and over.

I used Experiment in the title of this post because I consider that every project is an experiment. There are so many variable that can make a difference in the outcome. Also, it had been so long since I did any of this I had to look up the details in my notes. I purposly used different plants on each set of scarves so that I could see how well they printed (and whether they printed at all).

Scarf #1. One scarf is dipped in a liquid with tannin and the one that will cover this one is dipped in an iron solution. Then the two scarves with plant material between are rolled into a tight bundle on a short PVC pipe. Those rolls are steamed in a canning kettle and then left to cool overnight. For this pair of scarves I used rose flowers, cottonwood leaves, and pecan leaves.

The finished scarves. The one dipped in the iron solution is one the left and the one in tannin is on the right in all of these photos.

I’m not sure how much some of these variables matter, but they include: Is the fabric dipped in iron or tannin? Was the vein side up or down? Is this young growth (early spring like now) or old growth (fall)? One year I think a variable was that some leaves were sticky from aphids and they were covered in ash from the nearby fires—I think that make a difference. Notice that some of the images are “prints" but some are “resists” where you see mainly the outline of the leaf.

Scarf #2 has mostly weld leaves and flower stalks with a couple of grape leaves.

There is more resist effect of the grape leaf on the tannin dipped scarf, and that is also the one where there is more green color from the weld leaves.

I forgot to take a photo so scarf set #3 before I rolled it up on the PVC pipe. I used sheoak (Casuarina) and Chinese Pistache for these two. The tannin in the pistache leaves makes it blurry on the iron dipped scarf. Although there is blurring around the pistache leaves on the other scarf the leaves act as more of a resist. I don’t know how to explain that.

For the last scarves I used Oak leaves and tips from redwood branches.

When I compare the before and after photos of the iron-dipped scarf on the left I see that the darkest imprint of the redwood is on the part of the branch that is older. The newer growth is lighter. It doesn’t really matter, but that is just an observation. The oak leaves show a nice crisp resist on the tannin dipped scarf, but are very blurry on the iron dipped scarf. I think it is the tannin in the leaves that causes the blurry image but I can’t explain why or how.

These scarves are all at the Artery now. That is the artists’ coop in Davis where I sell my pieces. I plan to do more and will put some on the website.