Touched by Indigo - Royal Ontario Museum

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4 Zhong Maolan, Minjian ranzhi meishu, p. 154.
5 Ibid., pp. 156-157.
6 Tung oil is a wood oil made from the seeds of Aleurites cordata.
7 This pattern is illustrated in Zuo Hanzhong, Minjian yinran huabu taxing, p.
122.
8 This significance is provided in ibid. The sound lu is relied on to evoke the
character meaning "six," more often pronounced in an alternative sound, liu.
The double six in the idiomatic expression refers to a custom observed by
farmers of Zhejiang province who would pray to the deity of grains for
good harvests on the sixth day of the sixth month in the lunar calendar. See
Morohashi Tetsuji, ed., Dai kanwa jiten, vol. 2, p. 76. The term fengshun is
short for fengtiao yushun (timely wind and rain).
9 A blue-on-white version of this pattern is illustrated in Sun Jianjun, ed.,
Zhongguo lanyinhuabu, p. 105.
10 Jiang Zhuo, "Nantong lanyinhuabu de lishi he xianzhuang," p. 83.
11 Because not all motifs in one of the two rectangular patterns are readily
identifiable, only the content of one pattern is discussed here. The pattern
under discussion is illustrated in Zhang Daoyi and Xu Yiyi, Minjian yinhuabu,
p. 192.
12 This pattern is illustrated in Sun Jianjun, ed., Zhongguo lanyinhuabu, p. 89.
13 This pattern is included in ibid., p. 99.
14 The construction of a woman's trousers is the same as that of a man's. Yet,
while most men would wear them without any tying device (see discussion in
No. 3), nearly all women would wear their trousers with a cord.
15 This pattern is illustrated in Zhang Daoyi and Xu Yiyi, Minjian yinhuabu, p.
174.
16 See Sun Jianjun, ed., Zhongguo lanyinhuabu, p. 100 for an illustration.
17 This pattern is included in Zhang Daoyi and Xu Yiyi, Minjian yinhuabu, p.
214.
18 This pattern is illustrated in ibid., p. 223.
19 See No. 27.
20 For comparison, see similar phoenixes illustrated in Zuo Hanzhong, ed.,
Minjian yinran huabu, pp. 39, 133-134.
21 See similar dense compositions in ibid., pp. 129, 130, 140.
22 Zhong Maolan, Minjian ranzhi meishu, p. 156.
23 There is no information about the provenance of this quilt-cover top in the
museum record. The Textile Museum of Canada, however, owns a similar
piece depicting the Eight Immortals as the main theme (T96.0202). Its record
suggests Kiangsi (Jiangxi in pinyin) province as a possible place of manufacture.
Yet, a very distinctive border pattern created with fluid lines and forms
relates it to similar motifs seen in works produced in western Hunan province,
commonly referred to as Xiangxi. For one such example, see Tian Shunxin,
Xiangxi minjian wenyang ji, p. 7. Since Xiangxi could have been mistaken for
Kiangsi (or more properly, Jiangxi), Hunan province is also a possible provenance.
24 The peony here stands for the flower in Lan Caihe's flower basket. The pair
of scrolls are probably corrupted forms of Cao Guojiu's fish-drum (a bamboo
tube with two sticks) since there are sticks emerging from their centres. The
form is repeated to counterbalance the pair of clappers in the opposite corner.
For its correct form, see No. 52.
25 For the adapted vernacular version of this play, see Hu Guangzhou and Shen
Jiazhuang, Zhongguo gudai shida beiju zhuanqi, pp. 340-425.
26 Yang Yuhuan was bestowed the title of guifei in the fourth year of theTianbao
period (745).
27 The fifteenth day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar was the Midautumn
Moon Festival. The full moon seen on that night signified family
reunion and harmony.
28 The technique of freehand drawing with paste is not unlike tsutsugaki practised
in Japan. Okinawa dyers use a cooked mixture of glutinous rice flour,
rice bran, and lime as a resist agent. When they draw, they squeeze this
mixture onto the fabric from a cloth bag fitted with a metal or bamboo tip.
For more information, see Noriko Hirai, ed., Tsutsugaki Textiles of Japan:
Traditional Freehand Paste Resist Indigo Dyeing Technique of Auspicious
Motifs. In China the modern painter, Huang Yongyu (b. 1924), is known to
have often returned to his hometown, Fenghuang county in Hunan province,
to dye his artwork with indigo using soya bean paste as a resist agent and drew
directly on a fabric with it. See Tian Shunxin, Xiangxi minjian wenyang ji, p.
107.
Embroidery
1 The Chinese character for the number ten resembles a cross.
2 An early sutiao specimen is a Yuan-dynasty cotton bag embroidered with
dark brown thread using double running stitch, a technique often used in
cross-stitch embroidery. It was discovered in 1999 in Dove Cave, located in
Longhua county in Hebei province. For an illustration of this rare find, see
Zhao Feng, ed., Fangzhipin kaogu xinfaxian, p. 172. Another known early
specimen is a man's white cotton jacket embroidered with blue cross-stitched
peony pattern along the front opening and the cuffs. It was recovered from
a Ming-dynasty tomb in Nancheng county in Jiangxi province. See Huang
Nengfu, ed., Zhongguo meishu quanji: gongyi meishubian, vol. 7, p. 30.
3 Blue-and-white embroidery was particularly popular in Sichuan province. It
was widely practised from the end of the Ming dynasty to the end of the Qing
dynasty. See Huang Qinkang, Zhongguo minjian zhixiu yinran, pp. 35 and
41.
4 For illustrations of clothing and accessories adorned with blue-and-white
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