The studio Lara Mantell and Flo Hawkins share in Brixton is up on the eighth floor, filled with soft light. It’s a working space, with a long table made from recycled wood and wool felt, tubs of hand-mixed dye pastes, and vibrant fabric strung along the wall, the light dancing through like stained glass. It is also a quiet, careful world of their own making. “It’s quite a small space, but it’s very well utilised,” says Lara. “The table itself is about three and a half metres long, and we have the fridge, which is full of dyes.”
Lara and Flo happened upon the studio for their natural-dye company Ceres just before the first lockdown, after years of wandering. “We were forever traipsing around London with big bags full of dyes, kind of like nomads,” Lara recalls. Friends first, then collaborators, their early experiments were stitched together from residencies, projects and shared ideas. The pandemic delayed their first workshop, but brought unexpected visibility. “We got some really nice commissions,” says Lara. “People saw what we’re doing on Instagram.”
Both Lara and Flo had worked with chemical dyes before founding Ceres - Lara in the fast-paced world of commercial textiles, Flo through art and photography. Their early training shaped their attention to surface and pattern, but the shift to natural dyes opened something deeper. “There’s a process where you take one colour out and put another colour in - it’s called discharge printing, but it uses really nasty chemicals,” says Lara. Natural dyeing felt like a return to something slower, more elemental. “You can change the pH of natural dyes,” Lara says, “and the colours change as they overlap - they play with each other.” Flo smiles. “It’s magic. We can’t get enough,” she adds.
They print their signature geometric patterns using hand-cut paper stencils and screen mesh - it’s a process led as much by intuition as by design. “We reuse stencils and scrape everything, so there is never much waste at all,” says Flo. Their pastes are made from foraged plants, byproducts and kitchen scraps - weld, avocado, pomegranate, nettle. Each panel is numbered, an archive of place and memory. “Everything has a story,” says Lara.
Some stories are deeply personal. “We were using a madder which Flo and I got from a woman called Susan Dyer who we visited in her allotment before she passed away,” Lara says. “We call it the Susan madder.” They also use pomegranates sent from a friend who gathered them from where she lived in Spain. Flo reflects, “unlike chemical dye, natural dyes have this connection to nature, to people.”
Their workshops - held every six weeks or so - gather dyers, designers and gardeners from around the world. “Everybody comes with their own sense of provenance,” says Lara. “They bring different materials and perspectives.” The teaching, like the practice itself, is methodical but loose. “We are very methodological,” Flo explains, “but also free and playful… we like to explore without being scared.” The process is slow and sensory. “You have to be patient before you can get your finished object. Watching the colours as they change and are layered is magical,” says Lara. “And the colour smells good,” Flo adds.
The vibrancy of the colours surprises people. “There’s that kind of 1970s idea that natural dyes are kind of brown and yellow,” Lara says. “And then you suddenly get bright purple and orange, pinks and the greens.” Some dyes are modified with iron or pH changes and others shift with sunlight or time. “The tannin and the iron create some dark shade,” Flo says, holding up a piece that makes use of the pomegranate skins collected by her friend.
For TOAST’s spring shop windows, the pair were commissioned to create installations from more than 200 unique panels, taking inspiration from the seasonal concept, A Lightness of Being. The scale of the work is large - seven to fifteen pieces per location - and the mood is light, open, experimental. Each piece is made by hand with dyes that will continue to shift with time and light. The collaboration feels well-aligned. “People have said to us before, why don’t you work with TOAST?” Lara says. Flo nods: “We both care about materials, what they come from, how they’re made. We respect nature, and quality.” Lara pauses, then says it simply: “It’s about finding beauty in small things.”
View our collaboration with Ceres in our shop windows from Thursday 1 May.
Lara wears the Crinkle Cotton Gauze Top with the Cotton Linen Herringbone Trousers. Flo wears the Pleated Check Cotton Skirt with the Cotton Sleeveless Tee.
Words by Alice Simkins Vyce.
Photography by Lauren Maccabee.
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