Chapter 3 Section 2 Embroidery and Printing and Dyeing

China is one of the first countries to invent embroidery, printing and dyeing.As early as the distant Neolithic Age, our ancestors had already learned to use hemp and silk to weave plain or ribbed "cloth". In 1972, ribbed Gebu was unearthed from the Neolithic site of Caoxie Mountain in Wuxian County, Jiangsu Province.The warp density is 10 pcs/cm, the weft density: 13-14 pcs/cm in the ground part, 26-28 pcs/cm in the textured part. In 1958, silk sheets, ribbons and silk threads in bamboo baskets were found in the Neolithic site at Qianshanyang, Wuxing, Zhejiang. At the same time, several pieces of carbonized ramie [zhuzhu] linen cloth were also unearthed.According to the identification of relevant departments: the silk sheet is plain weave, with a warp and weft density of 40 per centimeter; the ribbon is a combination of 10 strands of ribbon, with three single yarns per strand, with parallel herringbone weave patterns.These flat and delicate silk fabrics are all products that are reeled and then woven with silk, and the technology has reached a quite skilled level.This shows that the weaving of the ancestors has gone through a long process of experience accumulation before this.The ancient Chinese book says that during the time of the Yellow Emperor, "the silkworm god offered silk, which is called the merit of weaving weaving", it seems that it is not completely fabricated by Xiangbi.

The large-scale promotion of cotton in my country was late (the planting and utilization of cotton in the southeast and northwest frontier regions was earlier, but it was introduced to the Central Plains after the Tang Dynasty, and it was only planted and promoted in the north and south after the Yuan and Ming Dynasties). Silk.The fabric made of kudzu linen was called "cloth" in ancient times, and the fabric made of silk was called "boo" in ancient times.In ancient times when men farmed and women weaved, it was women's business to manage silk and hemp. Therefore, in ancient my country, the work that solved the problem of dressing (such as weaving, sewing, embroidery, etc.) was collectively referred to as "female red (gonggong)".

During the Shang and Zhou dynasties, my country's hemp and silk textile technology was quite perfect, and the "brocade" of colorful weaving flowers and the "embroidery" of painting and embroidery on textiles had been developed considerably.According to archaeological discoveries, in the tombs of the middle and late Shang Dynasty, "wan" in plain pattern, "hu (huhu)" in crepe pattern, "luo" in twisted pattern, "qi" in twill pattern or fret pattern and double scriptures have been found. Shuangwei's "缣" and so on.By the middle of the Warring States Period, all kinds of silk and embroidery were very prosperous and dazzling.For example, in the Chu tomb No. 1 in Mashan, Jiangling, Hubei, which was excavated in 1982, the silk fabrics found in one tomb included silk, silk, gauze, sura, brocade, sash, group, colorful stripes, and embroidery, and the colors were red, yellow, and yellow. Green, blue, purple, brown, black, yellow, brown, etc. Embroidered patterns include dragon pattern, phoenix bird pattern, animal pattern, geometric pattern, etc. The weaving method uses plain ground warp jacquard, partition color "hanging warp", weft thread Advanced technologies such as flowering and single-sided jacquard knitting are dazzling and beautiful.

After the Han Dynasty, with the development of the "Silk Road", China's textile printing and dyeing had a greater development.At that time, the silk producing areas started from the coast in the east, Gansu in the west, Hainan in the south, and Inner Mongolia in the north. Not only were there various varieties, but the level of printing, dyeing and embroidery was also quite high.Many powerful families have recruited male and female workers to engage in weaving for profit, which has stimulated the continuous improvement of silk weaving technology.After the Tang and Song Dynasties, official and private silk weaving, printing and dyeing workshops developed rapidly all over the country, especially in the coastal areas of East China. "Splendid Wenqi" with various styles and decorations competed for splendor, making Chinese silk weaving craft more dazzling in the world. glory!

Although there are many varieties of silk in China and they are glamorous, they are not enjoyed by most working people (brocade weaving is popular among some ethnic minorities in my country, see the section "Brocade Weaving of Ethnic Minorities" for details).The long-term patriarchal feudal society and class oppression in ancient China deprived the working people of the right to enjoy silk. "Those who are covered with silk are not silkworm farmers." The common people can only wear clothes made of kudzu, hemp, coarse wool (brown), and cotton. And be referred to as "commoner".Even so, the working people's love for beauty is indelible.Although the raw materials of clothes are simple, Chinese working women skillfully apply the traditional weaving, printing and dyeing techniques of the motherland to the coarse clothing fabrics, and at the same time integrate their simple and beautiful feelings into each stitch, which makes ancient Chinese folk weaving and embroidery , Printing and dyeing is more simple, pure and colorful.From the perspective of Chinese folk embroidery traditions, the folk embroidery crafts in ancient my country were mainly used for decoration of clothing, shoes and hats, bed nets, hanging bags, backpacks and other small pieces (such as scarves, sachets, fan belts, purses, handkerchiefs, etc.) etc.), toys, etc.These folk embroidery handicrafts are mostly practical items in life.Embellishment and decoration of practical products are not only beautiful and generous, but also strengthen the fabric and increase strength, such as trousers, cuffs, collars, vamps, insoles, sock soles, headscarves, aprons, hanging bags, backpacks and embroidery, not only break the The single color of the large area of ​​the fabric strengthens the beautiful outline of the clothes, and is also wear-resistant and durable, which is stronger than using simple fabrics.

my country's folk embroidery pays attention to "feeling" and pays attention to folk traditions.For example: the embroidery pattern used for pillows is also a square pattern, most of the old people use the themes of Fu, Lu and Shou, which means wishing the elderly a healthy and long life; children use mostly "five poisons" pattern, tiger The pattern means avoiding evil and suppressing evil, wishing children to be as brave and strong as tigers; for young Yaner newly married, they usually choose patterns such as carp making trouble with lotus (symbolizing the harmony of love), lotus (event) giving birth to precious sons, and mandarin ducks playing in water. , to wish the newlyweds a happy family and many children.Another example: the flower-stitched or embroidered handkerchiefs are personal items for girls, and they are often used as gifts for lovers as tokens of love. Therefore, they are very beautifully embroidered and generous, hiding the secrets in girls' hearts; children's "tiger head" "Shoes" and "Tiger Head Hat", because of the hope and blessing of the mother, they are extraordinarily majestic and majestic, revealing such a strong and simple vigor.Therefore, judging from the tradition of folk embroidery in ancient China, most of the folk embroidery in ancient my country combined practicality and decoration with people's ideals and desires to pursue a happy life.On the premise of practicality, it strives for beauty in form and auspiciousness, or expresses people's true emotions in a condensed form by borrowing objects to convey emotion.

The folk embroidery in ancient China mainly includes embroidery, cross-stitching and appliqué. Embroidery is the use of colored threads (silk thread, velvet thread, cotton thread, etc.) to embellish beautiful patterns on the fabric according to the designed pattern, which was called "黹〔zhizhi〕" or "needle黹" in ancient times.Embroidery is mostly done by women. In the ancient society where men farmed and women weaved, it was the main occupation of women, so it was also a part of "female red". Embroidery in ancient China originated very early, and it was very developed in the Shang and Zhou dynasties.Many exquisite embroidery products have been unearthed in various parts of my country, such as the "Phoenix Bird Wearing Pattern Embroidery" in the Spring and Autumn Period, the "Dragon Phoenix and Tiger Embroidery" in the Warring States Period, and the "Changshou Embroidery" in the Han Dynasty.The folk embroidery of these dynasties is very rare, mainly because the cloth is not easy to preserve and has not been handed down.Embroidery in our country has a broad and deep mass base, and its production areas are widely distributed, but Jiangnan is the most popular.During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, "every family raised silkworms and embroidered every household" in the south of the Yangtze River, which greatly promoted the development of Chinese embroidery.

There are many methods of folk embroidery in ancient my country, such as laying needles, flat stitches, winding needles, loose needles, beaters, buckles, plate gold, braid embroidery, lock embroidery, etc. Although the techniques are not as exquisite as court embroidery, they have a wide range of themes and lively forms. , has a strong breath of life.The folk embroidery in ancient my country is traditional but not stylized. It uses local materials, embroiders according to the materials, and injects true feelings into each stitch and thread as it pleases. Therefore, it has a gorgeous and rigid palace embroidery. style.We usually say that folk crafts are the art of life and reality, and this is also evident.

According to different regions and customs, folk embroidery in our country also has different schools and styles.Generally speaking, comparing the south and the north, because the south is the hometown of silk and has a history of weaving and embroidery for thousands of years, the embroidery technology is generally higher than that in the north, and the style is also delicate and delicate. In comparison, the north appears rough and unrestrained.There are also great differences between the southern and northern regions.For example, the embroidery in Suzhou area in the south is fine and elegant; the embroidery in Changsha area is beautiful and simple; the embroidery in Guangzhou area is bright and fresh.The embroidery needles in Shaanxi in the north are thicker and the colors are brighter; the embroidery needles in Shanxi are fine and precise, and they pay attention to the contrast between bright red and green background colors and elegant patterns... These differences constitute the colorfulness of ancient Chinese folk embroidery and make them appear more lively. , more characteristic.

Famous regions for ancient folk embroidery mainly include Suzhou, Jiangsu, Changsha, Hunan, Guangzhou, Guangdong, Chengdu, Sichuan, etc. developed on the basis ofIn Shandong Province in the north, embroidery was very developed during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. "Women are all capable of embroidery in the county of Qi", and later formed the simple and honest "Lu embroidery"."Bian Embroidery" in Kaifeng, Henan, "Han Embroidery" in Wuhan, Hubei, "Ou Embroidery" in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, "Jing Embroidery" in Beijing, etc., are also developed on the basis of folk embroidery with a long history. Famous embroidery.

The themes of ancient folk embroidery are very extensive, generally based on flowers, insects and birds, animals and folklore characters, and most of them contain auspicious meanings, such as magpie (magpie) upper eyebrow (plum) tip, peony richness, Sanyang (sheep) Kaitai, golden (fish) jade (lan) full house, immediately Fenghou (monkey), continuous melons and fruits, qiqi giving off children, etc.Composition pays attention to fullness, symmetry and balance. Cross-stitch, also known as cross-stitch, is an embroidery method that strictly follows the warp and weft patterns of fabrics with small cross-stitch patterns.The cross-stitch pattern is composed of cross-shaped right angles, which has a unique deformed geometric decorative style, and it does not damage the cloth thread during embroidery, but can strengthen the wear resistance of the fabric, so it is widely loved by people. Cross-stitch embroidery has a long history in my country, and it is most common in the southern and southwestern minority areas.In the Ming Dynasty, residents in southern Zhejiang had been prevalent in decorating collars, trousers, shoe toes, pillowcases, bed curtains and aprons with cross-stitching.Later, because this embroidery technique is easy to learn, highly decorative, and can strengthen the fabric, it soon became popular all over the world. , Cross-stitching can be divided into different stitches and threads: frame flower, skimming flower and fiber flower.Hanging flowers are embroidered on one side, skimming flowers are embroidered on two opposite sides, and slender flowers are embroidered on both sides.The decorative themes of cross-stitching are mainly flowers, animals and pavilions.The layout of the pattern is generally a large group of flowers embroidered in the center of the cloth, and small corner flowers and border flowers are embroidered on the four corners and edges. There are also differences in cross-stitch styles in different regions.For example, the traditional cross-stitching of the Han nationality mostly uses white cloth to embroider blue flowers, while the ethnic minorities mostly use blue and black cloth to embroider colored flowers.This has a lot to do with the customs and habits of different regions and different nationalities. Cloth appliqué is an embroidery method that uses small colored cloth pieces to form various patterns as decoration, also known as "applique".Cloth appliqués are often used to decorate clothing, curtains, pillows, etc., and are often combined with embroidery to pile up relief flowers and animals on decorations, and even hang metal ornaments on them, which looks particularly rough and simple. In ancient my country, there was a custom of making "hundreds of clothes" for children.The so-called Baijia clothing is to collect small cloth pieces of various colors from the neighbors to make children's clothing, which means that hundreds of families protect and wish for peace.Cloth decals of the "five poisons" (scorpions, centipedes, snakes, geckos, and toads) are often pasted on this "baijiayi".The back cloth (used to carry children) used by some ethnic minority women in my country is often combined with embroidery and patch. It shows a beautiful and sweet world to children with exquisite patterns, and at the same time reflects the hope of mothers who are ingenious. The mood of children growing up quickly and healthily. There are also some handicrafts, such as children's pillows shaped into three-dimensional animals (tiger pillows, lion pillows, frog pillows, etc.), children's hats (tiger head hats, "five poison hats", etc.), children's shoes (tiger head shoes, etc.), incense sticks, etc. Bags (butterfly sachets, etc.), etc., the degree of combination of patches and embroidery is even higher.For example, the tiger pillow is made in the shape of a tiger, and the eyes, mouth and eyebrows of the tiger are embroidered with colorful threads, or the eyes, nose, ears and teeth are pasted with decals, which looks very powerful; the butterfly sachet is used as a token of love, Made into the shape of fluttering butterflies, skillfully decorated, the stitches and threads all reflect the love for the person you love. The finer the embroidery, the deeper the love. These are the exquisite folk embroidery crafts. Ancient Chinese folk embroidery, due to its long history and fragile practical objects, so far we have found very few real objects, and we can only dig out many crafts by relying on the traditional folk embroidery methods that are still circulating. Compared with embroidery, the printing and dyeing crafts of ancient Chinese people are more comprehensively preserved in some ethnic areas.Before the popularization of modern dyeing and weaving technology, the printing and dyeing of fabrics by the working people of all nationalities in my country mainly used indigo pigments to clamp [xiexie] (fabric dyeing was called valerian in ancient times), wax valerian and twist valerian.The popular blue calico in modern times is the development of these printing and dyeing techniques.The traditional batik of ethnic minorities such as Yunnan and Guizhou is the ancient Chinese wax wax. my country's dyeing technology originated very early. As early as the Shang and Zhou dynasties, mineral pigments (such as ocher, cinnabar, hufen, muscovite, gold and silver powder foil) and plant dyes (such as bluegrass, madder, gardenia, comfrey, etc.) Multiple dip-dyeing (the fabric is repeatedly soaked in one dye solution for coloring), over-dyeing (the fabric is immersed in more than two dye solutions several times to obtain intermediate colors of various colors) or with the help of a certain medium substance The mordant dyeing technology in which the dye pigment is attached to the fabric is mature.At that time, the design of patterns on fabrics was mainly to use the method of "painting and drawing (painting)" to paint on fabrics with pigments or dyes.It is said that the dresses, flag poles, curtains, towel carts, etc. used by the emperor's hundreds of officials in the Shang and Zhou dynasties used different "paintings" to distinguish official positions and ranks.Chinese archaeologists have found traces of colored curtains around the tomb in Shang Dynasty tombs in the eastern suburbs of Luoyang, with black, white, red, and yellow geometric patterns painted on them, as well as red, green, and white. It is "painting". "Painting" is time-consuming and labor-intensive. The dye solution is directly painted on the silk, and the color is easy to soak out, which will inevitably affect the quality of the pattern.Therefore, with the continuous improvement of ancient labor technology, printing and dyeing technology gradually replaced the "painting" technology ("painting" gradually decreased after the Qin and Han Dynasties, and was only used for some specific purposes, such as the one found in the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha, Hunan. The T-shaped silk painting is a rare "painting", which may have a religious nature). The earliest printing and dyeing techniques that replaced "painting" were letterpress printing and folder printing. Letterpress printing is to engrave a pattern on a flat and clean wooden board, then paint the raised part of the pattern with color, and print the pattern on the fabric by pressing.This printing technology is fast, high-quality, and the printed patterns are clear and crisp, with smooth and powerful lines and a three-dimensional effect, so it is developing rapidly.At present, the earliest letterpress printing works found in my country are printed colored yarn and gold and silver printed yarn unearthed from the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha, Hunan. The former is combined with letterpress printing and painting, and the latter is overprinted in three steps with three letterpress. , at a very high level.The letterpress printing process is simple and adaptable, so it later became the main printing method for clothing and binding in the past dynasties.This technique was later spread to Japan, and the Japanese called letterpress printed calico "zhewen" or "order cloth".The wooden stamp printing and wooden rolling printing created by the Uighur people in Xinjiang in the Qing Dynasty are also the development of this letterpress printing.Wooden stamps have a small area and are mostly used for local printing; wood roller printing is made of round wood with engraved patterns, which is suitable for large-scale pattern decoration. Clip valerian is sandwich printing.Its process is characterized by engraving patterns on wooden boards and oiled paper to make plates, and then clamping the fabric between two hollow plates so that the fabric does not move, and then painting or injecting color paste into the hollow areas, and then decomposing after drying. The open pattern becomes the printed fabric.The printing and dyeing technology of Jiaxie in my country was invented very early, and it was probably applied in the Qin and Han Dynasties, but it became popular after the Sui and Tang Dynasties.There are many valerian products from the Tang Dynasty, such as the valerian flower tree pair bird screens, landscape screens, deer grass screens, etc. preserved in Shosoin, Japan, all of which are fine works of valerian printing in the Tang Dynasty.Before the Tang Dynasty, the clipping process was mainly silk printing (Figure 4).After the Song Dynasty, with the development of cotton planting technology, cotton fabrics became the main source of clothing for the working people, so the folk folders were mainly printed blue calico.Because it is plate-making and dyeing printing, there are gaps in the pattern lines, which cannot be connected end to end.Blue printed cloth is mainly used for clothes, bed nets, quilt covers, door curtains, burdens, headscarves, etc. Wax valerian, also known as 﨟[la wax] valerian, batik.Its process is characterized by drawing patterns on the fabric with waxes (beeswax, worm wax, paraffin wax, turpentine, gum, etc.) for dyeing, and then dipping them in the dye solution at room temperature, and finally boiling to remove the wax, that is, white flowers with a color background. pattern.Wax valerian will have some cracks in the wax film due to fabric shrinkage or rubbing, so some pigments will seep into the cracks during the dip-dyeing process, and the finished product will show a trace of irregular ice patterns, forming a unique decorative effect, so it has always been loved by people. Wax was invented very early in my country, and the earliest batik cloth discovered so far is the figure batik cloth unearthed from the site of the Eastern Han Dynasty in Niya, Minfeng, Xinjiang (Figure 5).The bottom corner of the cloth is painted with a nude female figure with Buddhist beads, holding a bouquet of flowers, the image is natural and vivid.The wax valerian products unearthed from the Astana Tang tomb in Turpan, Xinjiang and the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang are very rich and colorful, including wax valerian silk with cloud flowers on the crimson ground, scattered flowers on the brown ground and green and white flowers on the tea ground, bouquets of birds on the yellow ground, yellow ground , and Greenland’s hunting-pattern wax yarns all show the superb wax-valve technology of the Tang Dynasty (Figure 6).Japan's Shosoin currently preserves four wax-valve screens from the Tang Dynasty. Among them, the tree elephant pattern screen and the tree sheep pattern screen are exquisitely crafted, plump in shape, and elegant in color. They are very rare boutiques. After the Song Dynasty, the wax valerian technique was gradually replaced by other printing techniques in the Central Plains, but it became popular among the ethnic minorities in the southwest.Today, in Zhenning, Anshun, Puding, Huangping, Danzhai and other places in Guizhou, girls learn batik techniques under the guidance of their elders when they are six or seven years old.By the age of ten, they can draw very delicate wax flowers.During the slack season, the girls here come in groups.Sit around the warm fire, put beeswax in a small bowl, talk, laugh and sing, draw beautiful patterns with melted beeswax, and decorate your clothes, quilts, straps, headscarves, pockets, etc. with batik.From this, we can imagine the scene when our ancestors drew wax valerian cloth, and we can also imagine the popularization of this dyeing and printing technology back then (Figure 7). The batik techniques of ethnic minorities in my country are diverse in style, but they also have common characteristics: full composition, fresh artistic conception, and great attention to the ingenious combination of dots, lines, and surfaces. This should be the result of the influence of ancient Chinese traditional wax printing techniques. Twisting valerian, also known as pinching valerian, tie-dyeing.This is a printing and dyeing method that binds parts of the fabric to prevent partial dyeing and form the desired pattern.Its operation sequence is to first sew or tie some parts of the fabric with needles and threads to prevent it from being dyed.After printing and dyeing in this way, the pattern from deep to light and with shading effect appears on the final fabric, which is quite changing and blurred.According to literature records, my country's twisted valerian has been widely produced by the 4th century AD at the latest.The popular patterns at that time included butterfly, wintersweet, crabapple, caviar, deer tire and so on.Tao Qian's "Postscript of Searching for the Gods" says that a young woman wearing a purple sika top looks like a sika deer from a distance. This may be the "deer fetus" with relatively loose patterns in the sika. The earliest twisted valerian silk we can see in ancient times is the twisted valerian silk with orthorhombic geometric patterns of the Jin Dynasty unearthed in Astana, Turpan, Xinjiang.There are many twisted valerian products unearthed in Tang Dynasty tombs.After the Song Dynasty, due to the waste of materials and labor, the government once banned it.After the Ming Dynasty, due to the emergence of capitalism in China, the number of dyeing and weaving workshops increased, and a large number of textiles with deep white flowers were printed and dyed. Batik and twisting were no longer enough. Moreover, the working people of our country created "discharge dyeing" which faded with chemicals through practice. "Technology, the efficiency has been doubled, so waxing and piercing have gradually withdrawn from the stage of history, and only some minority areas are still in use. The most popular printing and dyeing cloth in urban and rural areas in the Qing Dynasty was "medicine-spotted cloth", also known as "watering cloth", which is what we call blue calico today.Blue calico is the development of ancient valerian dyeing. According to some historical records, there are three main processes of its process: one is the scratch printing method.That is to say, "paint patterns with ash powder infiltrated with alum, and then add dyeing colors according to the author's intention. After drying and scraping off the ash powder, white patterns will appear brilliantly."One is the stencil scraping method. The method is to use oil paper to engrave and make a plate, and then put it on the cloth and scrape the anti-dyeing paste of soybean flour and lime.If you need cloth with white ground and blue flowers, you need to make two plates, one for the background color and the other for the pattern.Another method is woodblock printing.The method is to use woodblocks to carve images of flowers, birds, animals and figures, then cover the cloth with cloth, wet and tighten it, and then rub it with various dyes. The process is quite similar to the traditional stele rubbing in my country.The patterns printed by this method are generally more detailed, with bright colors and strong contrast. The pattern decorations on the blue calico in the Qing Dynasty are mostly common flowers, plants, birds and butterflies, and they are full of auspicious meanings. Among them, such as magpies climbing plums, phoenixes wearing peonies, lion hydrangeas, must be wishful, and thousands of characters flowing water, etc., are still favored by people today. favorite.