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dyeing leather with natural indigo


A natural indigo dye vat with leather at the Maven leather studio.
Freshly dunked leather hides hang over the side of a natural indigo dye vat at the Maven studio.

The first dip is always the most deceptive. The leather emerges a pale green, almost sickly, like it has been drained of something rather than enriched. But then the crisp air catches it, and the alchemy begins. The oxygen stirs the indigo to life, deepening it, darkening it, shifting it toward the color of deep water at dusk. It never ceases to feel like a small miracle.


Indigo is not like other dyes. It doesn’t soak in so much as it builds, layering itself onto the leather in translucent washes. Dip, lift, breathe, repeat. The Japanese call it aizome, a process of patience and devotion. The West Africans who have used it for centuries call it a color of wisdom, strength, protection. The molecules are the same across oceans, but the stories and meanings are different.


This vat was the first I've done in months. It can be difficult to find the time to tend a dye vat in between designing, sewing, working in my storefront, building my website, posting on social media, etc. etc. etc. This first indigo dye vat after a hiatus was meant to be simple, just a few large pieces of buffalo and a fennel-dyed cowhide I was hoping to transform into a seafoam green.

Leather hides, freshly dyed with natural indigo, hang to dry at the Maven studio.

An indigo vat always takes on a life of its own, the smell of fermentation filling the air, sharp and earthy. I watched the foam ripple across the surface, delicate and lacy, like something ancient whispering from the depths. The liquid itself was thick, alive.


The final colors are yet to be revealed, still more dipping to come but I imagine they'll settle somewhere between storm and midnight. Not quite navy, not quite cobalt. Something wilder, something that belongs to the earth. When I run my hands over the leather, I feel the weight of time in it. The plants, the soil, the hands that have worked this process for generations. I think of the dyers before me, wrists stained blue, stirring their own vats under different skies.


The color will soften over time. Indigo fades like denim, growing more familiar the more it’s worn, as if it remembers where it has been. A living color. A breathing one.


It is enough to witness it. To dip, to lift, to let it change.


A handmade, one of a kind Maven leather purse that has been dyed with natural indigo.
A finished Maven Harmony Leather Sling bag, dyed by hand using natural indigo.

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