• Hand-labelled rowan berry ink swatches on watercolour paper, shifting from coral to bark brown with vinegar, bicarb and iron, with overlapping circles drawn beneath
  • A rowan tree heavy with red berries beside the mown path through the young trees at the farm in Screveton
  • Three jars of rowan berry ink on the kitchen counter: coral, tan and olive, one berry with different things stirred in
  • Stripping rowan berries from the stalk by hand into an enamel pan
  • Rowan berries simmering in a green enamel pan, stirred with a wooden spoon
  • Pouring simmered rowan berry ink through muslin into a jar
  • A bowl of freshly picked rowan berries on the kitchen table, ready for ink making
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The Imperfect Circle · Screveton

Tree to Ink: a morning making ink from the hedge

Tree to Ink: a morning making ink from the hedge

£75.00 GBP
£75.00 GBP
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Three hours, four seats. Coming with a friend? Choose two.

Date

We make ink from whatever the hedge has that week: rowan now, then elder, sloes and hawthorn as the autumn goes on.

We start with tea, cake, and the tree. What it is, where it grows, what I picked from it, and what people have made of it besides ink: the food, the medicine, the stories. Then the berries go in the pan. We simmer them and strain them. Then the part I'd call witchcraft if it weren't just the kitchen cupboard. A pinch of one thing, a drop of another, and one tree gives you three or four colours. We bottle them up.

Then there's a sheet of paper. Mine has the swatches along the top and a drawing underneath. Yours can look like that or nothing like it.

You take home the bottles, the sheet, and knowing how to do it again.

The first two dates are £75, our opening price while we find our feet. After that it's £95.

What to bring

Nothing but yourself, and clothes that don't mind ink. Paper, pens, bottles and the berries are all here. Tea too.

Who it's for

Adults. 16 and 17-year-olds are welcome with an adult. No experience needed; if you haven't drawn in years, this is the morning for it.

Four seats at one table. It needs two to run. If you're the only one booked two days before, I'll email you and you choose: move to another date for nothing, or come anyway and we'll do it just us, with the studio door open as usual. Either way the seat you've paid for is yours.

Want the table and the door shut? That's a different booking.

Finding us

Pod 3, The Eco Centre, Home Farm, Screveton, NG13 8JL. Directly opposite Caffe Velo Verde. Park on the farm, by the café.

Five minutes from Bingham, a quarter of an hour from Newark, about twenty-five from Nottingham. The café is there for lunch after.

Changing your date

You can move to another date up to 48 hours before. Reply to your confirmation email and I'll swap it. Because this is a booking for a specific date, the usual 14-day right to cancel doesn't apply.

Can't make any of the dates listed? Tell me which days would work: louise@louiseclark.art. New dates go to the list two days before they appear here.

Photographs

I sometimes take photographs during workshops. If you'd rather not be in them, just say on the day.

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