A blue cloth with a white pattern

China people dyed blue grass, which can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Xunzi, a great thinker at the end of the Warring States Period, witnessed the pigment transformation process of green "blue grass" and the process from yellow to green, from green to blue, and then to blue. He lamented that "green is blue, and green is blue" and became an eternal saying that "shine on you is better than blue". From indigo dye to blue dyeing technology, indigo, indigo and other dyeing colors are also the main colors of traditional clothing in China.

The Book of Qi Yao Min written by Jia Sixie in the Northern Wei Dynasty? "Planting Blue" specifically describes the method of squeezing blue lagoon from the blue grass: "In mid-July, make a pit, make a hundred bundles, make a grass mud, make it five inches deep, and cover the wall with a raft. Cut the blue in the pit upside down, go into the water, and suppress the order with wood and stone. Stay overnight when it's hot, stay overnight when it's cold, drain, put the juice in an urn, put it in a five-liter lime bucket, and drop it by hand. Clear the water, don't make a small pit, and store it in the blue lagoon. Waiting for porridge, still outside the altar, blue lagoon has finished. " This is the world's earliest operating record of blue lagoon's production process. Blue calico is mainly composed of bluegrass, which can be divided into four kinds according to the characteristics of its family and genus and its growing environment, namely Polygonum, Indigofera, Indigofera and Isatis. Jiangsu is rich in Polygonum blue; Zhejiang, Fujian, Yunnan and Guizhou are suitable for planting indigo naturalis; Polygonum cuspidatum and Isatis indigotica should be planted in Shandong and Hubei. Indigofera and Indigofera are mainly planted in Taiwan Province Province. At that time, people used bluegrass to process indigo, which was mainly used to dye blue cloth (pure blue cloth) and also used to dye valerian and valerian.

Ancient leak-proof printing has a long history. As early as the Northern Dynasties, hollow patterns and patterns of white cloth with blue background appeared in the resist (fragments of white woolen cloth with blue background were unearthed at the Northern Dynasties site of Yulek ancient city in Wu Yutian, Xinjiang). Its pattern consists of large and small dots, but the dots are not connected, and there is a phenomenon of pattern splicing, which was originally called wax valerian. It became popular in the Tang Dynasty, also called Dyeing Valley.

Also include ground valerian and sandwich valerian. The process of folding is to carve with a specific board, then fold the cloth in half and sandwich it between two boards with the same pattern for a moment. After binding, inject the required color or put it in a dye vat for dyeing. After removing the splint, there will be a pattern of white flowers on a blue background. Because the pressing process is complex, the carved pattern is time-consuming and laborious, and it is easy to be deformed. This method was improved in the Southern Song Dynasty, and was used for printing and dyeing blue cloth, also known as "medicated patch cloth". According to the integration of ancient and modern books? "Occupational Prescription Code" records: "The drug points are distributed in Jiading and Anting towns. Jiading Middle School in Song Dynasty (A.D. 1208- 1224) was founded by Guixing. Dyeing, drying and ashing with a rag will make it blue and white. There are figures, flowers and birds, quilts and curtains. " The "medicine" in the medicated patch cloth is the dyeing raw material-blue grass, and the "spot" is the pattern-sized spot formed after printing with anti-dye paste. These spots can prevent blue dyeing and keep the grey cloth white, so it is called "medicine spot cloth", commonly known as watering cloth.

Huang Daopo, a female textile technical expert in Yuan Dynasty, was born in Wuni Town, Songjiang, Jiangsu Province (1958 was placed in Shanghai). As a child bride, she could not bear the abuse of feudal families and fled to Asia. After living in Hainan for 30 years, I learned the textile technology of the Li nationality, and then returned to my hometown, introduced and improved the textile tools of the Li nationality, made a whole set of production tools, such as defense, elasticity, spinning and weaving, and taught the textile technologies such as wrong yarn, color matching, brown thread and reeling, which promoted the development of cotton spinning industry in Songjiang area. After the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, cotton was widely planted, "spun into yarn and woven into cloth". Spinning and weaving in Songjiang and Nantong have become a "common practice". In the mid-Ming dynasty, it has developed into a distribution center for cotton textiles. The area is near the river and the sea, and the soil climate is suitable for cotton planting. The cotton produced is not only large in quantity but also good in texture, which provides good conditions for the development of handmade textiles. Farmers' families in this area take this as a sideline, and the cloth they produce not only meets their needs, but also sells to all parts of the country, Japan and Europe.

With the development of cotton spinning handicraft industry, cotton cloth has become quite popular among the people and has become the main daily necessities of farmers. A large number of blue grasses have been planted, and dye houses have increased one after another. People's requirements for daily necessities are constantly improving. The simple and rough graphics of the original "drug patch" can no longer meet the aesthetic and life needs of the people. Folk artists boldly absorb traditional art patterns such as paper-cutting, embroidery and wood carving, and constantly enrich the patterns of medicinal patches.

At the same time, with the development of oil umbrella industry, tung oil paper is used to carve pattern plates, which saves labor and time. The oiled diamond plate has strong water resistance and scratch resistance, long service life, richer pattern performance and more mature technology. The wide application of folk blue printed cloth has promoted the rapid development of the "printing burden" team, also known as "flower burden", which only prints, wraps and does not dye, and provides farmers with various forms of flower trays. This kind of "seal bear" is also called "naked seal" in Jiangnan. They walked the streets, carrying soybeans and lime powder at one end and scraping tools and flower trays at the other. Customers can choose patterns for processing, and they constantly change patterns to achieve prosperous business. According to the old master, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were nearly 100 "Indian bears" in Nantong. This convenient door-to-door printing service has won the favor of farmers. Farmers send the scraped grey cloth to a nearby dyehouse, or do their own indigo dyeing. Due to the increasing demand for blue printed cloth, the popularization of blue grass planting has also promoted the development of indigo industry. According to the memory of Chen Yutian, an old man from Chenggang Village, Ren Gang Township, Nantong City, his family has been planting bluegrass and vegetables for generations, and Xiaolan (Polygonum cymosum) has been planted every February of the lunar calendar.

Harvest the first blue in May and the second blue in summer. Every harvest season, please help your relatives and friends. On the day of cutting blue, everyone gets up at 3 am, and the harvested blue grass must be finished before sunrise. This blue grass has the highest indigo yield. After harvesting, bundle the blue grass into small bundles, put it head-down in a pit more than 1 m deep, and fill it with water. When the blue grass comes out, take out the stems and leaves, and add a proper amount of lime water to make indigo sink. Finally, pull out the plug of the passage leading to another hole in the blue grass pit, so that the excess water on the indigo can flow into the small pit. When it turns muddy indigo, it will be put into a pottery jar for its own use or sold to a nearby dyeing factory. The method of making blue is similar to that recorded in history.

The local raw materials for dyeing cloth and convenient self-spinning and self-weaving technology have made the dyeing and weaving industry in Jianghai area develop rapidly and gradually become a well-known specialty in China. The technology of blue calico spread from Jiangnan to Jiangbei, and from Suzhou and Nantong to all parts of Jiangsu, forming a main producing area centered on Jiangsu. The products are not only supplied locally, but also sold well all over the country. Printing spread and influenced the whole country. Shandong, Shanxi, Hunan, Hubei, Zhejiang, Anhui and Northeast provinces have successively set up blue calico workshops. Folk artists from all over the world combined with local folk customs to create blue calico patterns that meet local aesthetic taste, thus producing various patterns with different styles. Northeast China calls blue calico "twisted cloth"; Because the raw material is soybean, Hubei is called "bean dyed cloth"; Blue printed cloth needs engraved version, which is called "type dyeing" in Fujian; In Shandong and other regions, blue calico is still called "Yin Su" (named after Jiangsu is the birthplace of blue calico).