Bronte Leigh is a textile artist from Bristol, UK who works primarily with natural dyes and fibres to create one of a kind works of art and nature. After studying fashion design, she started to seek a way to combine her lifelong love of beautiful and tactile fabrics with a passion for design, colour, nature and sustainability,
The slow and peaceful alchemy of botanical dyeing involves extracting colour from the flowers, roots, leaves and bark of plants, alongside found metal scraps, even kitchen waste like tea bags and onion skins and applying them to fibres such as silk, linen and cotton. These colours have a vibrancy and richness that synthetic alternatives simply cannot replicate. They truly feel more alive…
Learning constantly through experimentation, an important lesson has been patience. The ancient practise of natural and plant dyeing can be slow and labour intensive, but she has learnt that the slower the process, the more rewarding the result. Using traditionally inspired techniques like bundle dyeing, shibori and resist printing, she draws both her inspiration and her materials from nature - taking influence from organic form and texture; the beauty of pattern, colour and geometry within the natural world.