Winter 2011/2012
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ild Fibers
Trafficking in Andean Luxury? (18)
Indigo’s Black Roots. (6)
Winter 2011/2012 wildfibersmagazine.com
Have “Ewe” Met? (46)
Features 6 Who Turned the South Black and Blue?
Meet Eliza Lucas Pinckney, the teenager from Antigua who “created” American indigo.
16 True Blue
From magical potions to human horsepower, the new film Blue Alchemy explores the history of indigo around the world.
18 In the Andes, There’s a Deadly Chase for Luxury
In the vast horizon of the Altiplano, protecting the vicuña herds has become a deadly business.
28 Reflections in the Canyon While the Andean condor soars through the clouds, the people on the street are equally alive with splendor.
34 Nicolae On the edge of Transylvania, one of the most engaging shepherds tends his flock.
46 A New Ewe for the Holidays Buying local isn’t anything new in Sweden, it started with “Mr. Potato” back in the 1700s.
56 Love Is in the Air There’s no rest for yak rancher Chris Devaney when there’s love in the air and Peanut is up chasing after the girls half the night.
64 Rise and Shine Getting up when the rooster sings isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but for just the right bird it can be more than worth the trouble.
Cover: Nicolae Toma casually posing in his bunda. Photo by Linda N. Cortright.
A shepherd like no other. (34) Winter 2011/2012
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“The rotting vegetation smelled so hideous that even buzzards refused to frequent the area around the indigo vat.”
Above: A bubbling vat of indigo dye.
wife’s weakened condition, he left Eliza in charge of 600 acres and 20 slaves. War was officially declared in 1739 after a series of hostile encounters, most notably the slightly whacky but memorable episode on the high seas near Havana, Cuba, where a Spanish captain seized the British ship Rebecca, believing its cargo was in conflict with trade agreements between England and Spain. The captain of the Rebecca, Robert Jenkins, did not take kindly to the siege and apparently laid some un-choice
words on the shoulders of the Spanish intruder. In turn, the Spanish captain took great offense at Jenkins’ verbal assault and retaliated by swiftly lopping off Jenkins’ ear with his shiny Spanish sword. Jenkins returned to England (with the ear) and presented it to the king. Although it was not officially called the War of Jenkins Ear until a century later, battles on both land and sea began to escalate and there was little hope of Lucas returning home to Wappoo Plantation anytime soon.
Roots of a Blue Blood Society? The Winyah Indigo Society, one of the oldest organizations in the country, was formed in the early 1740s by local indigo planters living in Winyah Parish, South Carolina. The group met at the old Oak Tavern on Bay Street on the first Friday of the month. “The Planters of the Georgetown district … met on the first Friday of each month, to talk over the latest news from London, which was never less than a month old; to hold high discourse over the growth and prosperity of the indigo plant and to refresh the inner man and so keep up to a proper standard the endearing ties of social life imbibing freely of the inevitable bowl of punch.” By 1753, the profits from indigo had made this aristocratic society’s treasury quite rich and the presiding officer made a proposal to the group. “Knowledge is indeed as necessary as light and ought to be as common as water and free as air. It has been wisely ordained that light should have no color, water no taste, and air no odor, so indeed knowledge should be equally pure and without admixture of creed or cant. I move, therefore, that the surplus fund in our treasury be devoted to the establishment of an independent charity school for the poor.” Rules of Winyah Indigo Society, quoted by c. Meriwether from The South in the building of a nation: a history of southern states by Joseph Walker McSpadden. The proposal was unanimously accepted and the Winyah Indigo Society School was established and ultimately attended by rich and poor alike.
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Eliza was inspired to grow indigo for many reasons, foremost of which was its high value in the European trade market, which had relied on importing it from India and South America. But Eliza was by no means the first to attempt to grow it in North America. Nearly a century before, Dutch settlers had tried to produce indigo dye from plants they found on the outskirts of what is now Manhattan. The Dutch eventually abandoned the project, however, when it proved unprofitable. They had been working with a species of wild indigo that was different from what was grown in the West Indies and other milder climates. Furthermore, creating indigo dye is extremely labor intensive and until the slave trade began to take root in the 1730s, there was a limited supply of cheap labor. So at a time when most teenage girls were being groomed for a career as a devoted wife and mother, Eliza was quite enchanted with the process of managing three plantations and planting teeny tiny seeds in her father’s absence, faithfully writing him every fortnight. “I wrote you in a former letter we had a fine crop of Indigo Seed upon the ground and since informed you the frost took before it was dry. I picked out the best of it and had it planted but there is not more than a hundred bushes of it come up, which proved the more unlucky as you have sent a man to make it. I make no doubt Indigo will prove a very valueable commodity in time, we could have the seed from the east Indies time enough to plant the latter end of March, that the seed might be dry enough to gather before our frost.” (1) The man Eliza refers to is Nicholas Cromwell, an expert in the field of making indigo dye who was from the British island of Montserrat. Lucas hired Cromwell to travel to Wappoo and teach his daughter how to successfully cultivate and process the plant. The reality, however, played out quite differently. Cromwell had no intention of giving Carolina an edge in the indigo market and surreptitiously sabotaged the dye vat. Once Cromwell’s nefarious mission was uncovered and he was sent back to Montserrat, his brother Patrick continued on in his place. According to some historical accounts, Patrick followed suit and also betrayed Eliza by “poisoning” the dye vats, although Eliza notes in a letter that they finally succeeded in producing 6 pounds of dye that year that was exported to England. In the end, the plantation’s success could be attributed to “a negro” from the West Indies that Lucas hired who was not only well skilled in raising indigo, but was genuine in his intent to share the proper knowledge. Finally, with the right seeds and the right methodology, indigo became one of the most profitable crops not only on Wappoo Plantation, but also throughout much Winter 2011/2012
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Without question Eliza Lucas Pinckney was seminal to the success of indigo in America, but a few well-timed wars and a sweet British subsidy were instrumental as well. Although the War of Jenkins Ear forced Eliza’s fa-ther to return to Antigua, it also sparked a rise in ship-ping rates and suddenly the British became quite inter-ested in South Carolina’s little “experiment.” Beginning in 1748, the British offered a six penny per pound subsidy on indigo. The dye that was shipped across the Atlantic in the cargo hold soon returned on the backs of British sailors. In 1754, the French and Indian War broke out in America. Although the impact of the war soon grew global, evolving into the Seven Years War, from the standpoint of indigo, it meant that Britain no longer imported the dye from the French West Indies, thereby putting even more demand on the American crop. War-fare inevitably benefits various industries and during the 1750s the value of indigo shipments surpassed rice. Pound per pound, indigo was more compact to ship, which lowered both freight costs and cargo insurance. Indigo had its heyday during the American Revolution. It was used as the dye for the blue coats, which became the uniforms of the Continental Army. Ironically, it was also the demise of the very place it was “born” when all of Eliza’s land was destroyed by British raiders. No one will ever know if America would have had its indigo blue bunting or the indigo blue in the original “Star-Spangled Banner” flag. But perhaps the biggest question is whether or not without indigo, we would have blue jeans. Indigo’s boom times came to an abrupt halt in America with the invention of the cotton gin. Thanks to its inventor Eli Whitney, the cotton gin was the first machine to mechanically separate cottonseeds from the fibers. The cotton gin not only changed the amount of time and money required to process cotton, but overnight, indigo fields were ploughed into cotton crops, spurning a new generation of slave-driven wealth in the south. When we look at the billions and billions of denimclad fannies throughout the world, most people give credit to the German immigrant Levi Strauss. Perhaps it is time that we also pay homage not only to indigo, but also to the quick-witted “island girl” who made it possible. F
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(1) Excerpt from Women of Colonial and Revolutionary Times by Harriott Horry Ravenel, LULU PR, 2010 (2) Archeology of the New Smyrna Colony by Robert Austin and Dorothy Moore, Southeastern Archeological Research Inc., 1999 14
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Visit www.worldofwool.co.uk the worldwide online suppliers of fibres to craft enthusiasts Winter 2011/2012
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In the Andes
There’s a Deadly Chase for Luxury Their faces are among the sweetest of the camelids and their fiber is by far the most precious. But the once critically endangered vicuña is at the forefront of a violent battle in Peru.
Story and Photos by Linda N. Cortright
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f you happen to find yourself traveling along the road to Colca Canyon in Peru, which is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and where tourists migrate to see the great Andean condor, you don’t want to miss stopping at Tambo Cañahuas. Most people pause there just long enough to get gas, buy a souvenir, and wolf down a cup of coca tea to ward off the effects of the high altitude, which dances above 15,000 feet with ease. But if you’re interested in the local fiber scoop, look no further than the kid in the dark blue baseball cap riding a 10-speed bicycle – he’s a “cop.” He may not look like one of the men in blue you see at Dunkin’ Donuts, but he carries a gun and he will use it. Without a car, a motorcycle, or so much as an imported yak to carry him over the Andean pampas, the bronzed kid with the crooked smile is charged with patrolling nearly 1 million acres of the Salinas Aguada Blanca Reserve with only a set of sturdy lungs and youthful determination. He is one of a half dozen men in the area who, for the sake of argument, represent the vicuña vice squad. Salinas Aguada Blanca Reserve is home to approximate-ly 20,000 vicuña, which provide the most precious of all the natural fibers, with its equally precious price tag of about
$535.00 per kilo. During Incan times the vicuña population hovered around 2 million, but after the Spanish conquis-tadores took hold, vicuña were slaughtered with abandon and their numbers throughout the Andes never fully recovered. By the early 1960s the future of the vicuña was dire at best. There were less than 5,000 animals left on the planet and the possibility of extinction was all but guaranteed. Eventually, they were listed under the Convention on Inter-national Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Appendix I, categorizing them as endangered and banning all level of trade. It took 30 years for the population to rebound and even-tually stabilize for the first time in half a millennium. The world population of vicuña is now 340,000 animals and 188,000 live in Peru. They were removed from the endan-gered list and are now classified as threatened under CITES Appendix II, making it legal once again to harvest fiber from live animals – but only under strict supervision. By law, unprocessed vicuña fiber cannot leave Peru, ArgenAbove: The sign at the entrance to the Salinas Aguada Blanca Reserve in Arequipa. Opposite: A curious vicuña by the side of the road in the reserve.
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Only in the highlands of Peru can you take so many vivid colors and combine them with such a variety of patterns to create the most stunning outfits - just to go shopping! 32
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Winter 2011/2012
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In a country that survived one of the most horrific reigns of communist rule, the utter enchantment of this Romanian shepherd is a glorious
NICOLAE
Story and Photos by Linda N. Cortright
D
uring the summertime Transylvania is paradise. Centuries of farming have kept the hillsides green and bountiful, and the slow onset of modernity has preserved much of its ancient architecture. Romania’s capital, Bucharest, is just starting to appear on the cover of travel brochures. No doubt the masses will eventually throng west to the countryside where horse-drawn carts and bearstudded mountains still decorate the landscape. The day I arrive in Romania is not paradise. It's the tail end of winter and the fog is so dense it is impossible to see where the snow stops and the fog begins. It is the proverbial “damp cold” that does not invigorate you but makes you wonder if you will contract pneumonia before nightfall. Ideally, I would have arrived on a day when there was at least a suggestion of sunlight, but alas, there is no camera setting for “remove large wet paper towel,” which is precisely what I fear all the pictures will look like. Some might wonder why I don’t just return in summertime. Who doesn’t want to visit paradise? The answer is simply that no matter where you go, paradise never lasts, and in order to understand a farmer’s life in this part of the world, one must visit at the end of winter, which offers a generous dose of reality. Shortly before noon I arrive in the town of Tulca, which is within whispering distance of the Hungarian border and technically not part of Transylvania, although its summers are comparably beautiful. The road to the village is narrow and the combination of weary old nags pulling hay carts and wayward sheep clogging the roadway makes for slow travel. Right: Nicolae Toma holding a healthy young Tsurcana lamb.
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new beginning.
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