Silk Scarf - Lion

Alice Fraudeau dyes these scarves by hand in her Paris atelier, one at a time, over three days. The process - cyanotype, discovered by the English chemist Sir John Herschel in 1842 - involves painting silk with a light-sensitive solution, composing it with nineteenth-century natural-history plates, and carrying it into the sun. The sun does the rest.

The imagery is drawn from old illustrated zoology. Panthers, herons, hymenoptera, laid out with the precision of a study. Each scarf arrives at its own particular blue - a scarf made on a bright afternoon is not the scarf made at dusk.

Exclusive to Australia.