2016
A borrowed garage
One barrel, skeins for two weaver friends, and a lot of reading about bran.
The studio and Inês
One person, three vats and a stairwell for drying, in Porto since 2016.
From the garage to the workshop
The first vat went into a borrowed garage in 2016: a plastic barrel, a sack of bran and a kilo of indigo powder, set up to dye skeins for two weaver friends who were tired of blues that faded by spring. They told their friends. By the third winter the garage was full of drying racks, and the car that belonged in it had been living on the street for a year.
In 2019 the studio moved into a ground floor workshop in Porto, with a sink long enough to rinse a length of linen and a stairwell that turned out to be the best drying room in the city. Velha was started on 14 March, the week we moved in, and it has not stopped since. Most weeks there are skeins from three or four weavers hanging side by side in that stairwell.
2019
The workshop
A ground floor of our own. Velha started on 14 March and is still dyeing every week.
2022
Rio joins Velha
A quicker fructose and lime vat, so the long lengths of cloth have somewhere to go.
2026
Ten years at the vats
The first skeins were dyed in 2016; Velha, the oldest vat still going, dates from 2019.
Drying in Porto
People ask how long drying takes, and the honest answer is that it depends on the Atlantic. Porto is a damp city for half the year; the air comes in off the sea already full of water and settles in the streets, and a wet skein of wool will hang in it quite happily doing nothing at all. In January I have had skeins on the stairwell rail for three days, turned every morning, squeezed every evening and still cool at the centre when I press them. The stairwell is the best place we have, because the warmth from the workshop rises up through it, so for most of the winter the way to the upper floors is lined with blue. The neighbour from the second floor stops on her way down to ask after every colour, which one is for whom and why this one is darker than last week's, and I have started telling her the shade names before I tell the customer. Then summer comes and it all turns round; a skein hung up at lunchtime is dry by four, and the worry becomes strong sun on a fresh blue, so the summer skeins hang indoors by the open door. Either way, quick or slow, nothing leaves here the day it stops dripping. Every piece is rinsed until the water runs clear and then aired for 48 hours, because indigo goes on settling into the fibre after it feels dry, and after two days on the rail it stops coming off on your hands.
How we work with you
One person answers
Every message is read and answered by Inês within two working days. You will be writing to the same pair of hands that dips your fibre.
Sample first
Nothing goes into a big vat until you have held the shade on your own fibre. The €25 card comes off any order over €200.
No surprises on price
You get the full price with your sample card, and it does not change. If your fibre arrives oily and needs scouring at €2 per 100 g, that is on the quote too.
Collect or a Friday drop-off
Collect Tuesday to Saturday, or we bring it round on a Friday within 30 km of Porto, free over €300 and €15 below that.
Visits
Visits are by arrangement, Tuesday to Friday. Write first and we will find an hour when the vats are calm. Bring your fibre and we will look at it together: how it takes water, what it is spun from, and which of the three shades it will carry best. Saturday mornings are kept for collections only.
Since 2016
10yearsOf skeins on the stairwell rail, bran every five days and blue hands every week.
Where next
- The vatsVelha, Rio and Pequena: bran every five days, pH 11 and the coppery flower.
- Dyeing and pricesYarn from €7 per 100 g, cloth from €14 a metre, and every term set out.
- Write to usWhat to put in your first message, and the opening hours.