August 18, 2022

Making Hammer Prints From Garden Flowers

This was a fun process to explore on this beautiful, sunny day.

Artist Janelle Rae (former artist in residence at Spring Bird/current creator of the honeysuckle meditation hut featured in the blue bench meadow) recommended making hammer prints with the zinnias that we are growing.

In the past, I have done natural dyeing with zinnias and other flowers, and I’ve made cyanotype prints with natural materials, but I have never tried a hammer print.

Now, I did not thoroughly research methods for this. I just sort of jumped into it, and I think I found that hammer printing is really more about the process than the result. I appreciate the messiness, the violence, and the immediacy it provides in contrast to the much involved natural dyeing.

Another warning, I did not mordant (pre-treating the fabric before dyeing) my fabric. I imagine that if you took the time to do so, you would have more vivid results.

I simply gathered some heavy duty plastic, pre-washed, vintage linen napkins, a hammer, and a bevy of blooms (zinnias, calendula, cone flowers, and cilantro) from the garden.

I laid out a sort of sandwich with plastic on the bottom. Then, I placed my fabric. Finally, I laid out the flowers, leaves, and stems on just one half of the fabric.

Then I folded the fabric over the flower blooms, and the plastic over the top of that. So, in the end, there is a lasagna of plastic – fabric – flowers -fabric – plastic.

Once the bundle was composed, I took the hammer to the surface and made light taps over the entire surface. This was fun because you can see the flower blooms flatten and smoosh inside.

After the pounding, you can peel back the layers to reveal your hammer print.

Peel off the flower remnants, and finally, wash the fabric and let it dry.

I don’t expect these “stains” to be completely color fast, and they certainly aren’t very vivid. Still they inspire something in me. I’m thinking about drawing on top of them or stitching embroidery around these loosey goosey stains.