Purchase
Art works
If you are interested in purchasing any of the art work on this site, please contact us via this site at Contact.
Books
Mushrooms for Dyes, Paper, Pigments & Myco-Stix™
This book details the history, development, and science of mushroom arts. It both tells and shows how to extract substances from mushrooms that allow an artist to make textile dyes, paper sculpture or plain paper, watercolors and crayons for drawing. Beebee’s pen and ink drawings appear throughout and color photos of mushroom arts accompany each section. Always eager to expand her knowledge of what she might find in natural substances, Rice devised a way to turn mushroom-extracted pigments into drawing tools, the result being her invention and development of “Myco-Stix™”. This book introduces this new drawing tool to artists everywhere. Mushrooms for Dyes, Paper, Pigments & Myco-Stix™ will delight, instruct, and inspire seasoned artists and newcomers alike.
Available for purchase at Fungi Perfecti. 162 pages, softcover. $36.95
Videos
Mushrooms for Color and Mushrooms for Paper
These two videos, streaming here free of charge, are an excellent addition to the book Mushrooms for Dyes, Paper, Pigments & Myco-Stix™ by Miriam C. Rice. The videos, produced in 1988 and 1993, use extensive footage of Rice working around her home in the mushroom-rich environs of Mendocino, California, Mushrooms for Color: Dyeing with Fungi chronicles more than 20 years of her research and offers a fascinating glimpse into her methods for extracting the full spectrum of colors she discovered, as well as the excitement generated by her finds in the fibre arts community worldwide. This history of Miriam Rice’s work is followed by Mushrooms for Paper: Papermaking with Polypores, a step-by-step guide demonstrated by Rice herself, to the method she developed for making truly gorgeous papers from mushrooms. 40 minutes, NTSC format, region-free. Streaming free of charge here.
Try It and See: The Story Behind the Discovery of Mushroom Dyes
A beautiful tribute produced by her children, Myra and Martin Beebee, Try It and See captures the early history of mushroom dyeing as told by Dorothy Beebee, Miriam Rice’s close friend and colleague in all things mushroom. Though mushrooms are now widely used as a source for natural dyes, many dyers today may not know that it all began with an accidental discovery by Miriam Rice, an artist from Mendocino, California. Miriam would later write the first book on using mushrooms as a new source of natural dyes in the 1970’s called “Let’s Try Mushrooms for Color.” This groundbreaking dye book was illustrated by Dorothy Beebee.
Here, Dorothy gives us a behind the scenes look into the discovery of mushroom dyes, the expansion of their work into two additional books, and her thoughts on the future of mushroom dyes. For more information about the history of mushroom dyes in Northern California, please visit mushroomsforcolor.com. Streaming free of charge soon.