Cutch extract comes from the heartwood of Acacia catechu, a tree native to India, Burma, Indonesia, and Peru. To produce it, the heartwood is steeped in hot water until a thick, syrupy liquid emerges, which is then dried and ground into a fine, water-soluble powder. Cutch is unique among natural dyes in being both a dyestuff and a tanning agent in one — it contains the colouring compound catechin alongside naturally occurring tannin.

Cutch produces a unique warm, earthy palette of colourfast browns — cinnamon, nutmeg, toffee, and ochre with an alum mordant, deepening to rich chocolate brown with iron, or shifting toward russet and terracotta with a touch of soda ash or calcium carbonate. It's prized for its excellent lightfastness and washfastness, among the most durable of all natural browns, and has a naturally sweet aroma in the dyebath.

Use at 15–30% WOF for a good depth of colour on cellulose fibres, up to 50% WOF for the deepest shades. Cutch doesn't exhaust easily, so a single dyebath can often be reused for several progressively lighter shades.

GOTS and Eco Dye certified, sourced responsibly from India.