How did dyeing develop?

During the Paleolithic era, 50,000-100,000 years ago, humans were already using mineral pigments to dye stone necklaces red. In the Neolithic era, people had already invented the use of hematite powder to dye linen red, and began making dyes from plants to color textiles. The colors of clothing and textiles recorded in the Shijing, China's earliest general collection of poetry, include white, red, yellow, dark green, turquoise, scarlet, and basil yellow, illustrating the variety of colors available at that time. During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, blue grass was the most commonly used dye, and the book Xunzi mentions the assertion that "the color green, taken from the blue, is better than the blue," while the practice of decorating fabrics with "drawing and coloring" appeared. The successful letterpress printing process tested during this period reached a high level in the Western Han Dynasty, with excavated objects such as "printed colorful yarn" and "gold and silver printed yarn" from the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha.

Through long-term practice, people realize that "anti-dyeing" can effectively control the dyeing area and shape of dyeing, and the Southwest ethnic minority areas first appeared in the wax as anti-dyeing agent dyeing method and achieved success. This kind of flower cloth with white flower on blue background or white flower on color background was called "Rend Gan Zhan Cloth" in ancient times, which is also known as "Batik Flower Cloth" nowadays, and batik is still popular in Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangxi and other places until now. Stranded val appeared in the period of North and South Dynasties, then called "handful of flowers", "handful of val" and "handful of halo val", now called "tie-dye Now it is called "tie-dye". The specific production method is to first fold the fabric, handful, and then tied with thread or nail sewing, after dipping and dyeing, remove the tie line, that is, the appearance of white patterns. Twisted val, clip val, wax val in the Tang Dynasty have appeared amazing works, exquisite patterns, patterns mostly in pairs, composition, modeling are quite rigorous. Birds and trees, flowers, hunting motifs, jointed beads, etc. are all extraordinary.

Song Huizong had not allowed the people to use the clamped valor products, also not allowed merchants to sell the clamped valor flower plate, due to the repeated prohibition, the Southern Song Dynasty had to revoke the ban. The Southern Song Dynasty, Guangxi Yao appeared "Yao spot cloth", is made by the craft of the floral plate leakage printing wax liquid.

The dyestuffs of the Ming Dynasty were controlled by the official Pigment Bureau, and according to the "Ming Dynasty Canon", the dyestuffs of the Ming Dynasty were made of wax. Weaving article" records, the Ming dynasty dyes have "sumac, Huang Dan, alum, gardenia, indigo, acacia flowers, umeboshi, soda ash, cedar, etc.", unearthed relics of the Ming dynasty can be seen at the time of textile dyeing level. Anti-dyeing technology in the Ming Dynasty developed into Shu val, brocade val, handful of val, seal val, paste water val, three sets of val, deer tire val and other anti-dyeing categories. Heirloom works are "Xuande five-color clip val", "Chongzhen five sets of seven-color dyeing val" and so on.

Batik technology in the Qing Dynasty reached its peak among the ethnic minorities, not only fine workmanship, but also wax pattern precision, many batik products have been sent to the court as tribute. In addition to blue printed cloth for clothing, bibs, aprons and other clothing, quilt tops, curtains, table surrounds, wrapping cloth, pillow cloth and other daily necessities are also blue printed cloth as the preferred fabric.