More Detail, Simple Tools
Fig. 1. The small stick is tagged with a label over half its size, bearing the Felix Driessen’s company seal. Look closer at its tip and you will see the indigo dye remains from when it was used to add detail to the material - Photography Cees de Jonge
Step number eight. After the dye, even more details are added using a simple painting stick. A long, thin piece of wood was used to paint small blue dots across the material. This is done delicately by hand on the flat cloth. In the illustration the stick is big, underlining the other colourful objects. However, when we found it in the collection, it was much smaller! We can only guess that the size of the stick depended on who was using it, or the level of detail needed in the painting.
“The effect is heightened by means of painting blue and other colours in the centre of the white spots and figured lines.”
Driessen notes that the blue dye used for this is “imported from Chinese merchants” like the Asian terms used before, but he did not know its origin either in nature or in Latin. The question of where the dyes came from seemed important to a businessman, whereas today we might seek more complicated answers: which culture does tie dye belong to? Who has the right to replicate these practices today?