Botanical Inks
A Creative Day with Hawthorn
with Babs Behan
Friday 20 September 2024
10am - 4pm (arrive at 9.30am for coffee/tea)
£130
Group Size - 10 people
A day with natural dyer Babs Behan to explore our relationship with hawthorn and the creativity this may bring through tea ritual, ink-brewing, mark-making and print.
At this time of year as we pass through the threshold of the autumn equinox, this gathering will provide an opportunity to connect with the slowing down energy of this season.
What a beautiful invitation this season is, to let go of the business of summer, to draw inwards and relish the quiet cosiness of autumn. The perfect time to dream and be creative again, inspired by the spirit and colours of Hawthorn.
Hawthorn can guide us back into our centre, to see and sense ourselves and others with kindness, from a soft internal landscape.
Babs will open the space with a simple group tea ritual to meet hawthorn and notice how our bodies relate uniquely to the medicine of this plant. Weather permitting, we may also venture outside to meet the tree in its place and gather around a fire.
The morning will be spent preparing a simple hawthorn ink, playing with mark-making and creating a beautiful collection of printworks.
We will gather tools from the garden to create different qualities and textures of lines on paper as well as experimenting with different kinds of paint brushes.
The ink will be altered and modified to offer different colours and mediums, with natural fruit acids, alkalis and mineral salts.
Wooden blocks will be available to print onto paper cards and posters which can be framed or hung from wooden hangers.
Babs is a botanical pigment specialist who focuses her work on local materials and traditional crafts. She is also an intuitive herbalist, weaving local plant medicine and ritual into her creative practice. She is the founder of Botanical Inks and the Bristol Cloth project and has written two books, Botanical Inks in 2018 and Botanical Dyes in 2023.
Wooden printing blocks carved with Babs' botanical motifs, handmade papers and magnetic wooden hangers will all be available to purchase at an additional cost at the end of the day.
Lunch
Alison will prepare a delicous vegetarian lunch including produce from the garden. We will round up the day with tea and home made cake. If you have any specific dietary requests do let us know on the booking form.
What to Bring
Expect an autumnal creative day retreat experience - bring your slippers and cosy clothes. We will aim to spend some time outside so do bring some waterproofs just in case . You may wish to bring a notebook and camera too.
Getting Here
Directions will be emailed to you a couple of weeks before the workshop. Use Damson Farm rather than the postcode on Google Maps.
Cancellation policy
As a small business it’s not sustainable to offer refunds. However if you need to cancel your place up to 28 days before the event you will be offered a credit towards another workshop. After that time, the offer only applies if we’ve been able to re-sell the place. It’s not possible to promote cancelled places for re-sale less than 4 days before the event.