Miriam C. Rice

Miriam C. Rice (1918 – August 30, 2010) was an American artist known for developing a palette of natural dyes extracted from mushrooms and other fungi.

Education and teaching

Miriam Rice studied sculpture at the Art Students League in New York and elsewhere.[1] She went on to teach sculpture at the University of Rochester.[1] She migrated to the west coast, settling in Mendocino County, California, with her husband Ray, a painter.[1] She helped to develop the art program at the Mendocino Art Center and taught there for years.[1] Her sculpture of Mendocino Art Center founder Bill Zacha stands in the center's courtyard.[1]

Dye research

In the late 1960s, Rice began working with natural dyes for her block prints and this led her to experiment with mushrooms. The first mushroom she worked with was Hypholoma fasciculare, which produced a bright yellow dye.[1] Her further experiments led her to mushrooms like the puffball Pisolithus arhizus (yellow, brown, and black hues) and the polypore Phaeolus schweinitzii (green, yellow, and brown hues).[1] Although Rice herself preferred to use scientific names when referring to mushrooms to avoid confusion, both of these mushrooms have acquired new common names thanks to her work. P. tinctorius is now known as dyer's puffball, while P. schweinitzii is dyer's polypore.[1] Over time, she uncovered a wide palette of mushroom dyes that were both colorfast and lightfast, and she is now acknowledged as a pioneer of modern research into the use of mushrooms for natural dyes.[2][3][4] Her palette of discoveries ranged from yellow through ochre, orange, rose, and russet shades to burnt sienna and chocolate brown.[1] Other researchers, principally from America and the Nordic countries, have built on her initial research to develop further colors, including greens, reds, blues, and violets.[1][3]

Historical sources show that mushroom-derived dyes were used in the Americas and Europe at least as far back as the 15th century,[3][4] though such uses appear to have been uncommon. World War II prompted some further experiments,[4] but when Rice began her research, the contemporary literature had very little information on the subject and no practical guidance. Rice wrote the first modern book on the subject,[1] Let's Try Mushrooms for Color, which came out in 1974 and was an international success.[1][5] Her second book, Mushrooms for Color (1980), included a much-expanded range of pigments developed in the intervening years.

Rice later experimented with using mushroom-derived pigments in watercolor paint and with turning the mushroom pulp that remained after dye extraction into paper.[2][6] She discovered that the best results for papermaking are obtained from tree fungi.[1] She also developed "Myco-Stix", crayons whose mushroom-extracted pigments are held together by one of several binders derived from mushrooms like Pseudohydnum gelatinosum.[7]

In 1976, as a result of her work, the Mendocino County Museum held the first-ever exhibition devoted to fiber art dyed with mushrooms.[8] In 1980, Rice led the founding of the International Mushroom Dye Institute to encourage the use and further development of mushroom dyes.[7] Around the same time, she also helped inspire formation of the International Fibre & Fungi Symposia, biannual meetings that convene artists and scientists from around the world to share their research.[1]

Publications

  • Let's Try Mushrooms for Color (1974)
  • Mushrooms for Color (1980)
  • Mushrooms for Dyes, Paper, Pigments and Myco-Stix (2007)

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Beebee, Dorothy M. "Miriam C. Rice and Mushrooms for Color". Turkey Red Journal. Fall 2008. Accessed 27 September 2017.
  2. 1 2 Beebee, Dorothy. "Remembering Miriam Rice. CNCH Conference of Northern California Handweavers, Spring 2011. Accessed 27 September 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 Hopkins, Susan. "Mushrooms as a Source of Color". North American Mycological Association website, 2015. Accessed 27 September 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 Bechtold, Thomas, and Rita Mussak, eds. Handbook of Natural Colorants. John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 183-85.
  5. ↑ E. N. Anderson, E. N., et al., eds. Ethnobiology. John Wiley & Sons, 2012.
  6. ↑ Davis, Mike, Robert Sommer, and John Menge. Field Guide to Mushrooms of Western North America. University of California Press, 2012, pp. 420-21.
  7. 1 2 "Myco-Stix Workshops". IMDI Mushrooms for Color website, March 01, 2008. Accessed 27 September 2017.
  8. ↑ Bone, Eugenia. Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms. Rodale, 2011, pp. 58-59.
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