Dyeing With the Earth: Textiles, Tradition and Sustainability in Contemporary Japan. Charlotte Linton
Dyeing With the Earth: Textiles, Tradition and Sustainability in Contemporary Japan. Charlotte Linton
Dyeing with the Earth reads like a textile atlas and ecological manifesto rolled into one — a deep dive into the way cloth, land, tradition and climate intersect in contemporary Japan. At the heart of the narrative lies the mud-dyeing tradition of Amami Ōshima: the book maps how the island’s makers harvest local plants, extract tannins, work with iron-rich mud, and create the distinctive dark, earthy hues of dorozome (“mud-dyeing”).
Rather than romanticising “craft” as nostalgic or isolated, Linton shows how this small-scale dyeing practice is now negotiating pressures from global demand, environmental change, shifting access to land and raw materials, and the ethics of sustainability. Through ethnography, on-the-ground reportage and beautiful photography, the book invites the reader to slow-see cloth: to register the sheen of earth-dyed fibre, the patience of process, the relationship between maker, place and material. It argues that sustainable fashion isn’t just about replacing synthetic dyes — it’s about respecting the ecosystems, labour and cultural context that produce real, living cloth.
For anyone drawn to material culture — cloth, dye, tradition, craft, ecology — Dyeing with the Earth offers a grounded, urgent vision of how the future of textiles might depend on remembering that every colour has origin in soil, water, plant, and hand.
About the Author
Charlotte Linton is a social anthropologist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Her fieldwork centres on traditional craft and textile production — especially in rural or island contexts — and she uses ethnographic methods to explore how globalisation, environmental change, and fashion-industry pressures impact local makers.
Publication date: 2025
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages: 304
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781478032212
Original: $98.15
-65%$98.15
$34.35Dyeing With the Earth: Textiles, Tradition and Sustainability in Contemporary Japan. Charlotte Linton
Dyeing with the Earth reads like a textile atlas and ecological manifesto rolled into one — a deep dive into the way cloth, land, tradition and climate intersect in contemporary Japan. At the heart of the narrative lies the mud-dyeing tradition of Amami Ōshima: the book maps how the island’s makers harvest local plants, extract tannins, work with iron-rich mud, and create the distinctive dark, earthy hues of dorozome (“mud-dyeing”).
Rather than romanticising “craft” as nostalgic or isolated, Linton shows how this small-scale dyeing practice is now negotiating pressures from global demand, environmental change, shifting access to land and raw materials, and the ethics of sustainability. Through ethnography, on-the-ground reportage and beautiful photography, the book invites the reader to slow-see cloth: to register the sheen of earth-dyed fibre, the patience of process, the relationship between maker, place and material. It argues that sustainable fashion isn’t just about replacing synthetic dyes — it’s about respecting the ecosystems, labour and cultural context that produce real, living cloth.
For anyone drawn to material culture — cloth, dye, tradition, craft, ecology — Dyeing with the Earth offers a grounded, urgent vision of how the future of textiles might depend on remembering that every colour has origin in soil, water, plant, and hand.
About the Author
Charlotte Linton is a social anthropologist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Her fieldwork centres on traditional craft and textile production — especially in rural or island contexts — and she uses ethnographic methods to explore how globalisation, environmental change, and fashion-industry pressures impact local makers.
Publication date: 2025
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages: 304
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781478032212
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Dyeing with the Earth reads like a textile atlas and ecological manifesto rolled into one — a deep dive into the way cloth, land, tradition and climate intersect in contemporary Japan. At the heart of the narrative lies the mud-dyeing tradition of Amami Ōshima: the book maps how the island’s makers harvest local plants, extract tannins, work with iron-rich mud, and create the distinctive dark, earthy hues of dorozome (“mud-dyeing”).
Rather than romanticising “craft” as nostalgic or isolated, Linton shows how this small-scale dyeing practice is now negotiating pressures from global demand, environmental change, shifting access to land and raw materials, and the ethics of sustainability. Through ethnography, on-the-ground reportage and beautiful photography, the book invites the reader to slow-see cloth: to register the sheen of earth-dyed fibre, the patience of process, the relationship between maker, place and material. It argues that sustainable fashion isn’t just about replacing synthetic dyes — it’s about respecting the ecosystems, labour and cultural context that produce real, living cloth.
For anyone drawn to material culture — cloth, dye, tradition, craft, ecology — Dyeing with the Earth offers a grounded, urgent vision of how the future of textiles might depend on remembering that every colour has origin in soil, water, plant, and hand.
About the Author
Charlotte Linton is a social anthropologist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Her fieldwork centres on traditional craft and textile production — especially in rural or island contexts — and she uses ethnographic methods to explore how globalisation, environmental change, and fashion-industry pressures impact local makers.
Publication date: 2025
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages: 304
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781478032212
