The Stories Dyes Tell by Sylvia Houghteling

This talk brings together poetry, dye recipes, textiles, and their representations in painting to explore the vivid but quickly fading pink and yellow dyestuffs that were used in seasonal celebrations in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century South Asia.

A dye is something that imparts color to fibers by chemically binding to the material. Safflower, turmeric and saffron were treasured materials even if they were fleeting. In tracing the usages of dye materials that doubled as cooking ingredients, this study engages taste alongside the tactile, visual and olfactory senses.

Houghteling teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses that engage with the intercultural connections and conditions of exploitation forged by art objects in the early modern period; theories of ornament; the history of the textile medium; and the visual arts and material culture of South Asia. Her research specializes in early modern visual and material culture with a focus on the history of textiles, South Asian art and architecture, and the material legacies and ruptures of European colonialism.

Members of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and students: $5
General admission: $15

Find out more and register online here.

Image: Portrait of Sylvia Houghteling