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Text: Jiangyu Kuo
Editor: Jiang Yu Kuo
Preface
The textile dyeing technology of the mainland has a long history, and a large number of unearthed cultural relics provide us with a wealth of ancient dyeing fabrics, and various ancient documents and ancient books have recorded in detail the planting methods of dye plants, the production methods of dyes and the process of dyeing textiles with plant dyes.
These are the crystallization of the wisdom and wisdom of the ancient working people of the mainland, and are the precious cultural heritage of the Chinese nation.
Because mineral dyes are mostly insoluble in water, they cannot be directly dyed on fabrics, and not only must be used by other means when dyeing, but also have weak color fixability.
The plant dye can be dissolved in water and directly color the fabric, and has been widely cultivated in most areas of the mainland where agriculture is developed, and the plant dye has achieved a leap from wild to artificial planting, and has become a part of the traditional agricultural planting economy, so the plant dye has become the most important source of dyes in ancient times.
Types of plant dyes in ancient texts
Blue is one of the most common colors in ancient times on the mainland, and has always been the basic color of clothing and daily necessities, so the amount of blue plant dyes is the largest, and the information recorded in ancient documents is also relatively rich.
The plant dye dyed blue is generally called bluegrass, which is actually a variety of different plants, and it was cultivated very early in ancient times. According to the records of "Tiangong Kaiwu", the blue grass used to dye blue can be subdivided into indigo, woad, horse indigo, etc.
Indigo is the main representative of the ancient blue plant dye in the mainland, and belongs to the annual herbaceous plant of the Polygonaceae family in the plant classification, which is divided into large-leaved species and small-leaved species.
It is native to the periphery of Southeast Asia and is found in most parts of the southern and northern parts of the continent. Indigo grows white and red spike-like flowers in autumn, and the dyeing material is mainly leaves and stems.
Woad, also known as tea blue, is a biennial herbaceous plant of the cruciferous family, with small yellow flowers at the end, native to China, mainly distributed in Anguo, Hebei, Nantong and Zhejiang.
It is said that because woad is easier to hydrolyze than indigo, in the period when science and technology were not developed enough in ancient times, indigo made from woad was more popular than other blue grasses such as indigo, and the classics before the Ming Dynasty even had the saying that "indigo is unbearable".
Ma Lan, also known as Daqing, Dalan, Mountain Blue, etc. In the plant classification, it belongs to the family of Lordaceae, which is a shrub-like perennial herbaceous plant, up to 1 meter high, with corolla funnel-shaped lilac flowers.
It can be harvested twice a year, and the harvest between May and July is called summer blue, and the harvest between September and October is called winter blue, which is mainly distributed in the subtropics of Southeast Asia and the mainland Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Hainan and other places.
Wood blue, also known as locust blue, Indian blue, small shrub plant, belongs to the leguminous plant in plant classification, corolla red, distributed in mainland Shandong, Jiangsu, Fujian, Taiwan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hubei, Sichuan, Yunnan and other places.
As early as the pre-Qin period, the mainland had a mature understanding and extensive use of bluegrass. There is already a record of the blue in "Erya": "Hui, Ma Lan." And in the "Book of Rites: The Order of the Month", it is clearly recorded about the use of blue grass: "so that the people do not dye the blue with love".
The process of making plant dyes in ancient documents
The red plant dyes recorded in ancient documents mainly include madder, safflower, sumac, holly, begonia, etc., and the most widely planted and used are the herbaceous plants madder and safflower, which are born in China, and safflower is a red plant dye introduced from the Western Regions in the Han Dynasty.
madder, grassy, climbing vine, with multiple rhizomes, and the fibrous roots on its nodes are red; There are more than ten to dozens of flowers, the corolla is pale yellow, and it is pale brown when dry.
Often born in sparse forests, forest edges, shrubs or grasslands, its roots contain alizarin, with alum as a mordant can be dyed red, the color of madder dyeing belongs to dark red, commonly known as "earth red", and madder dyeing requires complex mordant dyeing process, madder is produced in Northeast, North China, Northwest and Sichuan and Tibet.
It is also distributed in Korea, Japan and the Russian Far East, and madder is the earliest red plant dye used in ancient times in the mainland.
According to relevant archaeological data, the textiles unearthed in the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha have been verified to be made of madder and aluminum-containing mordants.
Safflower, an annual herb with erect stems; All leaves are hard and leathery; The inflorescences are numerous, mostly red and orange; The achenes are obovate.
Originated in Central Asia, the Han Dynasty was introduced to the mainland, the production area of safflower is mainly concentrated in Xinjiang, and it is also cultivated in other parts of the mainland.
Unlike madder-dyed "earth red", safflower can also be dyed directly on cotton and linen fibers, so it is extremely important in red plant dyes.
However, safflower is not born in the mainland, but the Western Han Dynasty by the Western Regions to introduce and plant plants, according to Wang Zhen's "Book of Agriculture": "safflower, a 'yellow blue', the leaves are quite blue, so there is a 'blue' name.
In the "Safflower" section of "Tiangong Kaiwu", the methods and standards for planting and harvesting safflower are described in detail: to plant safflower, seeds should be sown in the garden and planted in early February.
If planted too early, when the seedlings grow to about one foot high, they are easy to eat the roots and die, and when the soil is fertile, the safflower seedlings can grow to two or three feet.
At this time, it is necessary to drive piles next to each row of flower seedlings, tie ropes to block the seedlings, in case they are blown off by the wind, if the soil is not fertile, the seedlings will only grow to one foot five inches, then there is no need to do this.
The safflower blooms in the summer with prickly bulbous buds, and the flower pickers must pick them with dew, and if the sun rises and the dew dries up, the flowers will close and cannot be picked.
When there is no dew on a rainy day in the morning, the flowers bloom less, because there is no sunlight, it doesn't matter if you pick it late, Sumu, formerly known as Sufang, is an evergreen tree of the legume family, which can be up to 6 meters high; pinnate compound leaves, leaflets papery; Panicles apical or axillary, petals yellow.
It is native to India, Myanmar, Vietnam, the Malay Peninsula and Sri Lanka, and is cultivated in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian and Taiwan.
The wood of Sumu can be used to dye red, and Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" said that "the island has Su Fangguo, and its land is this wood, hence the name". In the Jin Dynasty, Ji Han's "Southern Grass and Trees" recorded that Su Mu "soaked in the water of Yuling, the darker the color", but "the decoction of the juice is not ironware, the color is dark". "Heavenly Creations" contains "wood red with sumu wood frying water, into alum, rafts." ”
Sumatsu can also be over-dyed with other dyes to create richer colors.
Compared with mineral dyes, the biggest advantage of vegetable dyes is that the color fastness of the fabric is higher and it is not easy to decolorize, while the mineral dyes are easy to decolorize due to their color adhering to the surface of the fabric through some binders.
Therefore, plant dyes have always been the most important dyes in ancient China, and their production and dyeing processes have been recorded in various ancient literatures.
epilogue
People say that it is a woman's nature to love beauty, and beauty is not only a hot topic for modern women, but also a practice of ancient women's love for beauty.
However, due to the limitations of technical conditions in ancient times, there is no such abundant cosmetics available today, and the fat powder used in women's beauty is mainly extracted from plants, so the pigments in plants occupy a great position in ancient times.
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