Art Cloth, Naturally

An Ecoprinting & Natural Dyeing Retreat AT IL BACIARINO, TUSCANY

June 18 - 27, 2027
November 5 - 14, 2027

Ten days of pressing leaves into silk and linen and wool. Gathering dye plants from the land outside the studio door. Watching colour arrive from things that were growing an hour ago.

This is the retreat I built around a question I could not stop asking: what does the plant actually want to give? Not what it says on a mordanting chart, but what it does when heat and water and the particular chemistry of this specific soil ask it. We work with the olive trees, the eucalyptus, the rosemary, the blackberry, the silver wattle, and whatever else the season is offering — because the land at Il Baciarino is as much a part of the teaching as anything I say in the studio.

Art Cloth, Naturally is for anyone who wants to understand ecoprinting and natural dyeing from the inside out. Not just what to do, but why it works, what to do when it does not, and how to read your results rather than just hoping for them.

What We Cover

The ten days move through three interlocking areas of practice. We do not race through them. We layer them, so that by the end you understand how each one changes what the others can do.

Ecoprinting begins with the basics of getting a clean, defined print — mordants, fibre preparation, bundling technique — and then builds into the more complex work of blankets and dips, concurrent dyeing, and pH modification. We start with what the plant gives freely and work toward coaxing what it holds back.

Natural dyeing covers the full sequence: preparing the cloth, preparing the bath, maximising colour uptake, and then working with modifiers to shift what you have made. We dye with what grows here — rhubarb, marigold, weld, cutch — and with some of the great historical dye plants: logwood, madder, cochineal, lac.

Indigo and resist work brings in the vat — the particular alchemy of reduction dyeing — and the resist techniques that create the relationship between indigo and the printed or dyed cloth underneath it.

We work in pairs as well as independently. The paired structure is deliberate — it means every experiment runs twice, side by side, so you can see directly how a single variable changes the outcome. It is one of the fastest ways I know to build genuine understanding rather than just accumulated experience.

A Typical Day

Mornings are in the studio — demonstration, then hands-on work, then looking at results together. Afternoons are more fluid: some days we continue making; some days we walk the land to gather plants; some days the sea calls and we go.

Evenings are long and unhurried. The table at Il Baciarino is worth sitting at. We eat well — local food, Italian wine, the rhythm of a meal that does not rush.

By the end of ten days you will have a substantial body of work, a reference collection of plant and mordant samples with your own notes on each, and a practice that you can take back into your own studio with real confidence.

The Setting

Il Baciarino sits in the hills of the Maremma, forty minutes from the sea. The studio is purpose-built for this kind of work — good light, running water, outdoor space for steaming and rinsing. The dye garden and the surrounding land are part of the classroom.

The olive grove. The wood-fired hot tub. The beach twenty minutes away. The particular quality of November or June light in Tuscany, depending on which offering you choose.

Who This Retreat Is For

Art Cloth, Naturally welcomes makers at any level of experience with ecoprinting and natural dyeing — from complete beginners to experienced practitioners who want to go deeper into the technical side of the work. The only requirement is genuine curiosity about what plants can do to cloth. Maximum 8 participants.

2027 Dates and Price

June 18–27, 2027
November 5–14, 2027

€2,600 per person — all inclusive except accommodations. This means all meals and drinks, all materials and tools, all day trips and cultural excursions, and pick-up and drop-off from Grosseto train station.

A note on availability: all 2026 Art Cloth, Naturally retreats are full. The dates above are the 2027 offerings. Early booking is strongly recommended.

Before booking I recommend spending time with the Il Baciarino website and Instagram — it is the kind of place that sells itself once you see it.

I would rather you ask than wonder. If you have questions about whether this retreat is right for where you are in your practice, write and ask.