Dye

Bhutanese women practised their local art of dyeing until recent times when synthetic colours and imported coloured threads became easily available. They dyed their threads or clothes using minerals, vegetables, cereals and lac, used and ash and fruits as binders and colour enhancers. Among plants, madder, indigo, tumeric, walnut, alum, bucket and symplocos paniculata, known locally as zim, are used for dyeing. The ingredients are used with binders and enhancers in appropriate proportions to get the right tone of the colour.