Treehugger featured a great post on a neat place today.

Guests at Oasi San Benedetto
are invited to participate in a number of activities, but the
ecological guest ranch specializes in the history, production and use
of natural dyes and offers a series of related courses. San Benedetto
is home to the small but well curated Museo dei Colori Naturali where
one can discover ancient and modern techniques for making dyes from
herbs, flowers and other natural materials.

These colors look just like those in so many frescoes I saw in Florence.  They have packages of dye, pigments for paint preparation, soap and shampoos.  If I ever get back to Italy, I’m going to look this place up. (strongly resisting ‘Italy has such a great culture’ rant.)

In the meantime, I’d like to try collecting my own dye preparations.  Elspeth brought a couple of great books to practice once, and now I’m inspired to put some thought into my garden choices.  I’ve added these two to my Amazon wishlist:
A Dyer’s Garden
Dyes from Native American Plants

The first is (I think) one of the ones that Elspeth has.  It’s great because pictures are shown of various fibers dyed with each plant discussed.  The second is more technical – from the Booklist description:

…and the colors obtained from 158 native North American plant species
that are dissected and their parts processed and tested with five
mordants. The result is a collection of more than 4,600 dye samples
presented in a wealth of color photographs. The authors meticulously
describe each of the 158 species and the exact colors various parts of
each plant produce, and they identify the experimental conditions that
result in little or no dye color. Each entry includes a description of
the plant’s morphological characteristics, soil requirements, and
distribution.

So one to browse in and one to answer technical questions.