Blue Calico Indigo Dyeing Technique

Indigo calico dyeing is an ancient Chinese resist-dyeing craft already present under the Western Han. Hunan is a major centre of the trade, with Fenghuang and Shaoyang Counties standing out; the Liu-family calico craft of Fenghuang's Tuojiang town was added as an extension of the item onto the first national ICH list (code Ⅷ-24).

A pierced paper stencil is laid over white cloth and a resist paste of soy-bean flour and lime is spread over it; once dry the cloth is repeatedly dipped in an indigo vat, the paste scraped off and the cloth rinsed and dried to reveal blue-ground patterns in white—plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum, phoenix, qilin and lucky geometry—the process intricate and the hand fine.

Indigo calico was among the most widely worn folk cloths of south and southwest China, and the Tuojiang Liu craft keeps a unique folk hand alive, of real value for the study of Chinese dyeing and printing and folk art, and a living witness to everyday life in western Hunan.