19/07/2026
Natural wood dyes and stains - August 15th 😍 most explorative workshop of our craft summer!
We have one free bursary place and two low income tickets to offer for this incredibly exciting workshop taught by Mishka Lesayova ().
This workshop invites participants to explore wood as a surface for natural colour, investigating how plant-derived dyes and handmade lake pigments can transform pale timber into rich, vibrant colour studies. Working with species such as birch, maple, pine and poplar, we will experiment with natural dye extracts and pigment-based stains, discovering how colour interacts with grain, texture and absorbency.
Through a combination of practical making and material inquiry, participants will learn how natural dyes can be extracted and applied to wood, before exploring the process of creating lake pigments which are highly concentrated colourants made by converting liquid dyes into organic pigments. Using wet lake pigments as stains and washes, we will investigate methods for achieving more saturated and expressive colour while developing an understanding of traditional and contemporary approaches to natural colour-making.
About Mishka:
Mishka is a founder of livingwell, artist and creative health practitioner based in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Over the years she has worked extensively with communities, within creative health context and as an independent artist. Mishka works with natural colour and is driven by an exploration of kinship with more-than-human world. Mishka interrogates the idea of collaboration with ecosystems rather than extraction from them, she is curious about how materials carry their own agencies and temporalities, and how working slowly reshapes our understanding of sustainability as an embodied practice of care.
Mishka’s instagram:
and
Mishka’s website: www.mishkalesayova.com
