The Beauty Of Nature

– Ancient Chinese Traditional Dyeing Technology

 

 

While watching Chinese ancient act movies, you could be attracted by the beautiful and soft clothing in the movies. So, is there really such beautiful clothing at that time? The answer is yes! From the description about the young girls’ dressing in The Books of Songs to the similar description in A Dream of Red Mansions, it’s obvious that the colors of ancient clothing are as beautiful as today’s.

 

Because of the technological limitations, ancient dyes are divided into mineral dyes, plant dyes, and animal dyes. In ancient times, mineral dyes were usually used as paints, and animal dyes seldom used. Thus, this article just introduces a few plant dyes and their sources.

(By Meister nach Chang Hsüan – The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=155372）

• Red series

In ancient China, the dyes for dyeing the fabrics red were from a plant named madder, and the word, madder, still has the meaning of ‘red’ in China today. Another kind of plant used for red dyes is the red flower – The dyes made from red flowers feel more brightly colored than other red dyes, and red flowers can be used as the raw material of cosmetics.

（Ancient Chinese Textiles，study.com，online resource: https://study.com/academy/lesson/ancient-chinese-textiles, accessed date: 12. Mar .2018)

• Yellow series

Whereas yellow dyes are mainly taken from gardenia fruits, the dyed fabric is light orange after drying. In fact, people can also make yellow dyes with some of the other plants.

 

• Green series

The dyes for green fabrics are made from several kinds of plants of Rhamnaceae, or a compound of a yellow dye and blue dye. The people seldom dyed fabrics with green dyes in ancient China although they’re easy to produce, for its difficult dyeing a fabric green.

（Ancient Chinese Textiles，study.com，online resource: https://study.com/academy/lesson/ancient-chinese-textiles, accessed date: 12. Mar .2018)

• Blue series

Blue is a color widely used for dyeing fabrics, and people can take the raw material of blue dyes from many kinds of plants, and therefore blue dyes don’t need to be mentioned too much here.

 

• Purple series

Purple dyes are taken from a kind of plants named lithospermum, which is widely distributed in China and Japan. Unfortunately, the process of dyeing a fabric purple was quite complicated in ancient times, so purple fabrics were always the nobility’s favorite.

 

 

In addition, almost all colors of dyes you can imagine can be made by mixing two or more basic colors. Briefly, the beautiful colors and soft materials endowed Chinese traditional dress with a beauty beyond description.