James Wood is a recent graduate now working on ‘The Foraged Book Project’ a collaboration with 30 artists who are creating a unique handcrafted book entirely from wild and foraged materials. He runs foraging, natural dyeing and paint making workshops in North West England.

I attended his “Dye and Paint Making” workshop on 9th May where we collected local dye plants, extracted and modified their colours on fabric samples and then created pigment and paints to take home. It was a fun and educational day and James kindly agreed to being interviewed afterwards.

How did you get into natural dyeing?

I got into natural dyeing through foraging which I started during my second year at University. The main reason was because I was producing art work. I was painting, making artwork about sustainability but at the time I was using store bought paints which were made from synthetic colours and petroleum based...