Maurizio Savoldo

La Robbia

Textile dyer

©La Robbia

The ancient art of botanical colour

Maurizio has revived the long-lost art of natural dyeing
He uses local wild plants and plant waste to dye wool, silk and other fibres
He learned dyeing recipes from the elders of his native Sardinia

Born and bred in the heart of Sardinia, Maurizio Savoldo became passionate about natural dyeing in the early 2000s, while studying Natural Sciences at university. For his graduation thesis in systematic botany, he focused on local plants and interviewed many elders in their nineties to retrieve the ancient dyeing recipes that nobody else could remember. Previously, natural dyeing had been very common on the island for centuries, but it gradually fell into disuse because of synthetic dyes and the crisis of the local textile industry. Since he opened his workshop La Robbia in 2005, he has been the only professional natural textile dyer in Sardinia since the Second World War. At the beginning it was tough, people didn’t want to buy his yarn, because it was more expensive than the chemically-dyed one. But environmental awareness has increased in recent years and now Maurizio's work is more appreciated.

Interview

©La Robbia

©Valentino Poddie

What are your creative processes?: After collecting dyeing plants, I chop them into tiny bits and soak them into water for 12-24 hours. Then I make a decoction at 70-90°C and filter it to obtain the so-called dye bath. I then immerse the yarn, that I have previously treated with rock alum to fix the colour.
What kind of yarn do you dye?: Mostly Sardinian wool and silk. I also dye linen, cotton and canvas, but natural colors perform best with animal fibers. Our yarn is either sold in skeins or used by my partner Federica and my mother to manufacture our branded bags, scarves and furnishing accessories.
Which plants do you use as ingredients?: I pick wild plants from the fields – madder for red, dusty rose and salmon pink, daphne for mustard, wild lavender for army green – and collect plant waste like walnut hulls (for brown) and onion peels (for golden) from local industries. Local people help too: every year they bring me tons of pomegranate peels.
Why are natural dyes better than synthetic ones?: They are harmless for the environment and our health, while synthetic dyes contain chemicals that are a major cause both of water pollution and dermatitis. Aesthetically, synthetic colours are flat because they contain a single pigment. Natural dyes have more than one, so they are alive and vibrant.

Maurizio Savoldo is a master artisan: he began his career in 2005 and he started teaching in 2007