Sumac Powder

Description

Sumac Powder (Rhus coriaria) is a traditional tannin for pretreating cottons.  The tannin is derived mainly from the bark of the tree, but all parts contain tannin and may be used.

Sumac is from the Rhus genus and its scientific name is Rhus coriaria. It’s native to southern Europe and western Asia where it is commonly known as Tanner’s Sumac or Sicilian Sumac. We are fortunate to have number of North American native sumacs including Rhus glaubra, sometimes called Smooth Sumac, and Rhus typhina or Staghorn Sumac, known for its dramatic bright red berry clusters. The staghorn berries were used by indigenous people as a tea, and the bark, branches, leaves and roots all contain tannin.  This tannin-rich source was also combined with iron to create dark shades of gray and near black. The red berries may be used as a tea, a “lemonade” and also ground as a tangy spice. This formulation of sumac that we offer is the ground bark and wood.

I was amazed at how beautiful a base tannin Sumac is. It imparts a light, clear yellow on cotton, making it an ideal base for color overdyeing as well as indigo combinations. Like our other examples, when combined with other colors you can get exciting mixes and beautiful color blends that harmonize and are perfect for patchwork, creating gradations and stitching.

Sold in 250g packaging

For information on how to achieve a beautiful gradation of color with sumac, visit our Mordant Monday blog page.  We offer the instructions on how we achieved this beautiful series of shades using the traditional cellulose mordant method of a tannin + aluminum sulfate, and instead of gallo tannin, we used sumac, indigo and madder extract.