Carnation Earrings

Dangling red carnations to wear proudly.

One day, Alice, from Caldas da Rainha (Estremadura, Portugal), went in search of red. She needed it to make the Carnation Earrings she was imagining in silk and cotton, with a silver hook.

She looked around - where is the red, where is my red?

From the busy urban landscape we had just come from, we recently saw red in traffic lights, billboards, fire hydrants. Of course, Alice wanted something more organic and with a very specific shade.

We thought of the red that you only get when you speak from the heart, but that was too poetic. Alice wanted something more tangible, a red that was truly alive.

She found it in cochineal and madder, with which she dyed the hand-woven carnation petals, while the green stems and leaves were dyed with dyer's iris and indigo.