"In the end, the green is harvested, and there is no profit; In the end, the blue is picked, and there is no money. "This is the Book of Songs. Xiao Ya", which records a traditional craft.

It is a traditional process of dyeing twine for cloth with plants and trees. This material is taken from the mountains and rivers, and with the help of the magic of nature itself, it adapts to the changes of the four seasons and is dyed in different colors according to the solar terms.

Judging from the records of the Book of Songs, plant dyeing has a history of 3,000 years, but since a hundred years ago, Western chemical dyes were introduced to China, and plant dyeing has gradually fallen silent and faded out of people's field of vision.

Nowadays, plant dyeing is gradually returning to people's field of vision. When industrial dyeing has fully met people's color needs, why can plant printing and dyeing be sought after again?

Perhaps because people are aware of the destruction and pollution of nature by industry in the industrial society, this kind of dyeing art using plants and trees as raw materials should be the most environmentally friendly natural beauty in this era.

In Japan, there is a craft called "once upon a time". The name is a little literary, but it is the truest portrayal of it. In this way, it takes two months to dye a piece of cloth, which is equivalent to the speed of a snail compared to the current industrial hair dyeing.

However, this kind of "slow production" is regarded as a high-quality craft by the Japanese.

Japan has always admired ingenuity, and some people say that the emergence of "once upon a time" is a unique taste of Japan. In this way, you are very wrong, because "once upon a time" is the ancient Chinese plant dyeing process.

Dyeers, they have a unique love for nature, can confidently observe and perceive nature, look for beauty from weaving and dyeing, and find the existence of unique colors. And refine these natural colors on the cloth.

The colors named after many plants, such as gardenia, maroon, and turmeric, are accurate and intimate, giving people an inexplicable sense of presence.

In this complex and fast-paced era, plant dyeing is an alternative existence. It comes from natural plants, Chinese medicinal materials, flowers, vegetables, tea, etc., and extracts the dye solution from the roots, stems, leaves, skins and other parts of flowers and fruits.

The peculiarity of the fabric given by the dyeing of plants lies in the changing natural colors and the quiet and serene temperament of the plants, as well as the fragrance of plants and trees.

It is dyed by hands, precipitated in water, and finally colored and fixed by the sun; It has the memory of nature and time, as well as the temperature of hand-made. After being washed at first, although it fades slightly, it is just like the color washed by the years, and has a quiet, life-like taste.

Some people say that plants and trees are dyed by life. These plants taken from the mountains and rivers will also show different colors due to various factors such as the right time and place, and each dye is unique.

The pure color of this plant makes people look at the fabrics as if they are reborn. It is a breathable intimate garment with nature's most precious gifts.

The idiom "blue out of blue" refers to the dyeing of plants and trees, and indigo made from blue grass can be dyed with a greener color. This traditional craft was the most important dyeing technique in ancient times.

They followed the Silk Road during the Tang Dynasty and spread to all parts of the world. Silk made of silk is light and transparent, and they are dyed with plants and trees in a colorful and natural and clean color, which makes people in other countries amazed and loved.

In their eyes, these silks that are as light as cicada wings and dancing in the wind are heavenly creatures. When nature's unique colors are also presented, it is a wonderful work of art in the world, not a simple decoration. These plants dye silk and are also considered to be the colors of the Orient!

At that time, the palace was dyed with plants, and there were 9 commonly used fuels, which could be dyed in more than 40 colors, such as red flowers, blue indigo, and black oak bowls. The royal garments were all dyed with plants, such as the bright and majestic dragon robes.

If silk was a luxury for the rich, then coarse cloth was used by the common people. Nature treats people fairly, regardless of whether they are poor or poor. The colors of plants dyed on coarse cloth have become the most familiar colors to civilians.

The coarse cloth dyed by the plant is mostly blue or cyan. It is a plain color, a temperament unique to civilians. In particular, the scholar's cyan robe shows the rare sense of superiority at the bottom of society. That kind of blue robe was also a luxury in ancient times, and the green robe of the children of the poor family was often mended and mended. Blue is better than blue, and perhaps this explanation will also work.

Farmers are often blue. Coarse linen clothes, not as delicate stitches as silk brocade, after dyeing, it has a different taste. The coarse cloth with good water absorption absorbs the essence of these plants, and has a three-dimensional effect against the backdrop of large stitches.

The kind of loyalty, sincerity, diligence and thrift of the peasants at the bottom are very well expressed! Just as nature treats people's gifts equally.

The plant dye, which is almost extinct, has finally regained its self-confidence in the present. More and more people are paying attention to plant dyeing and the mystery behind it.

Fabrics dyed by plants, they seem to have life in the present. Behind the gorgeous and unique colors, there is a strong artistic flavor in it. It's like a watercolor painting, and it's like an abstract oil painting. And they all give people a positive style, which is very infectious.

This ancient Chinese craft is blooming in a new era. It has a natural taste, mild, healthy and peculiar, and has become an effective way for people to express their beauty and pursue natural health.

Where there is life, there is nature, where there is nature, there is color, and where there is color, there is culture, which is a kind of affection that deeply binds us. Thank you for their contribution to us and for showing such a rich color of life!

There is a "dyeing grass garden" in the China National Silk Museum, which is a plant selected by the ancients for thousands of years to make dyes for clothing.

Some time ago, I went to the China National Silk Museum at the foot of Yuhuang Mountain in Hangzhou, and Liu Jian, an associate research librarian, told me that his team had done a systematic study of the color of clothing during the Qianlong period, combined with the historical materials left by the Weaving and Dyeing Bureau of the Qing Dynasty Internal Affairs Bureau, restored the dyeing technology at that time, and restored a set of "Qianlong chromatography" - 33 kinds of clothing colors commonly used in the Qing Dynasty court.

Because of the popularity of "Yanxi Raiders" and "Ruyi's Biography", after the express newspaper reported it, it caused a wave of heated discussions. Among them, many people have noticed that unlike today's chemical dyes, plant dyes have always been used to color clothes in ancient China.

Raw materials from natural plants are used to dye clothes, also known as "plant dyeing", which has a long history.

According to historical records, at least in the Zhou Dynasty, people began to extract dye from the roots, stems, leaves, and skins of flowers and fruits. The colors in the poems such as "Qingqing Zijin" and "Green Clothes" in the "Book of Songs" come from natural plants.

The imperial courts of all dynasties in China have set up official positions in charge of dyeing, called "dyeing people", and the dyeing institutions of previous dynasties have different names, such as the dyeing department of the Qin Dynasty, the dyeing institute of the Tang and Song dynasties, and the blue indigo institute of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Indigo is extracted from the leaves of bluegrass

Traditional plant dyes call blue, yellow, red, white, and black five colors, and then mix the five colors to obtain other colors. In the Eastern Han Dynasty's "Shuowen Jie Zi", there are 39 color names; In the Ming Dynasty, the number of recorded color names such as "Tiangong Kaiwu" and "Tianshui Iceberg Record" rose to 57; In the Qing Dynasty, a total of 704 kinds of color names have appeared in the "Snow Eun Embroidery Spectrum".

Capturing the colors of plants and storing them in dyed fabrics is a craft handed down by the ancients until now. China National Silk Museum (National Silk Museum), has been studying this, in order to make dyes, they also opened a "dyeing garden", which is planted with more than a dozen kinds of plants, carefully cared for by the experts of the National Silk Museum research and dyeing, every year in May and June, is the time when they grow the most vigorous. The restoration of the "Qianlong chromatography" has the credit of these plants.

Liu Jian said that not all plants with colors can be dyed, and the plant dyes they make are all screened by their ancestors for thousands of years. Let's introduce a few plants that are used to make dyes and see what they look like. What color are they dyed?

The tuber of turmeric, from which yellow edible dye can be extracted. This plant, which looks a bit like a plantain leaf, is native to India. It is recorded that the common people of India have been eating turmeric for 5,000 years, and curry is made by grinding turmeric tubers.

In China, turmeric is a commonly used traditional Chinese medicine, Li Shizhen has a detailed record of turmeric in the "Compendium of Materia Medica", calling its medicinal properties as bitter, bitter, cold, and non-toxic. The ancient recipe uses turmeric to treat paralysis caused by rheumatism, and it can also cure unbearable heartache.

The color of turmeric dyed is a bit orange, and it can be bought in general Chinese medicine pharmacies.

Blue is the oldest and most widely used blue dye in China. "Xunzi Persuasion Chapter" said that "green is taken from blue, and green is blue", which refers to the blue dye indigo, which is extracted from the leaves of blue grass. In ancient China, the indigo blue grass had plants such as indigo, woad, and horse indigo, and these "blue" national silk museums were available.

Now the wood blue, which is in full bloom, comes from the tropics, and jeans were first dyed with this indigo.

This is an ancient plant dye. With its roots, it can be dyed red, but it is used less. The more common type of red dyeing is safflower.

There is an allusion to the name of knotweed. Legend has it that when Sun Simiao was collecting medicine outside the city, he encountered an injured tiger, Sun Simiao saw that the tiger's legs were red and swollen, so he hurriedly took out the medicine from the medicine bag, mashed it, took the mountain spring and adjusted it, and put it on the tiger's legs while feeding the medicine to the tiger to eat.

After a few days, the tiger's leg healed. Since then, this tiger has been inseparable from Sun Simiao, and has become his mount, and later generations will call this herb "knotweed".

Quercus is a type of oak tree, and there are many of them on Yuhuang Mountain in Hangzhou. Its fruit is called an oak bowl and is hard, a bit like a chestnut. Hiding in a bamboo forest in the Silk Museum, it is difficult to discover its existence without looking carefully.

It is used to dye it in a simple way, taking a shell bucket to boil water, and then using black alum mordant, which is said to be used as a natural hair dye. Perhaps the ancients wanted to cover their gray hair, so they used it.

In rural areas, many children like the rehmannia flower, which is shaped like a wine glass, and the nectar is very sweet when picked and sucked. But for dyeing, it is the root of rehmannia that is used.

The freshly dug rehmannia root is called fresh ground, which can be used as medicine and has the effect of stopping bleeding and cooling blood. The juice of the rehmannia root can be dyed, and the dyed fabric is golden yellow in color.

Rehmannia was also used to feed horses in the Tang Dynasty, and it is said that the horses that grew up eating Rehmannia were brilliant. The Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi's "Rehmannia Picker" wrote: Sui Yan has no food, and rehmannia is picked in the field. What will be the use of it? Hold on to the grain of exchange.

The flower buds of the national locust tree are shaped like rice grains, so they are called locust rice. On the left hand side of the main entrance of the National Silk Museum, there are two locust trees. The National Silk Museum restores the "Qianlong chromatography", and the bright yellow color is the acacia rice used.

Bright yellow is the color of the emperor, the queen mother, the empress, and the imperial concubine, and it is dyed with acacia rice. After buying the sophora rice from the Chinese medicine store, boil it in water for a while to remove the residue, and the bright yellow pigment will appear.

The leaves and fruits are small. The leaf shape is diamond-shaped, and the leaf color is bright red in spring and autumn. At this time, some of the leaves have begun to turn red, red and green, and they are very beautiful.

On Baochu North Road, the street trees on both sides of the road are planted with black trees. The leaves of the black tree are used to dye black, and the black rice to be eaten in the beginning of summer is used by many people, and the leaves are used to cook soup, and then the glutinous rice is soaked in the soup cooked.

Before synthetic dyes were introduced into China at the end of the Qing Dynasty, people extracted colors from natural materials. The industrious and intelligent working people use the grass, leaves, flowers and trees endowed by nature to restore the colorful nature.

There are two types of natural dyes recorded in ancient China: mineral dyes and vegetable dyes. The mineral dyes that dye red include hematite (also known as ochre) and cinnabar; Those dyed yellow include Shi Huang and Huang Dan; The ones dyed blue include azurite and malachite, also known as limestone and stone green; The white ones have lead powder and mirage, and the black ones have natural black ores.

Dyeing with fossil fuels is called stone dyeing. "Examination of the Work" cloud: "Zhong's dyeing feathers, with Zhu Zhan Dan Qin." It refers to the method of dyeing feathers with cinnabar. The No. 1 tomb of Mawangdui in Changsha once unearthed a vermilion silk luo, and the vermilion on the fabric was dyed by cinnabar.

Mineral dyeing gradually declined after the Han Dynasty, and the mainstream of China's printing and dyeing process is plant dyeing with plants as dyes.

Grass dyeing refers to the use of plant roots, stems, flowers, leaves, fruits, peels, dry wood, etc. as dyes to color hemp, kudzu, silk, wool and other fiber fabrics. The main dyes are blue, akane, gardenia and so on.

Blue grass leaves are used for dyeing green, madder root is used for dyeing red, and gardenia fruits are used for dyeing yellow. The concept of "plant dyeing" is said to have been first proposed by the Japanese scholar Yamazaki Bin in 1929, but the history of "plant dyeing" in China is as long as that of fiber fabrics.

"Xia Xiaozheng" recorded: "In May, the blue knotweed was opened. "Blue knotweed refers to blue grass, which can dye the fabric blue, "Xunzi Persuasion" in "green, taken from blue and green in blue", using the principle of blue grass dyeing.

There is "dyeing people" in "Zhou Li, Tianguan Tsukazai", and there is the position of "palm dyeing grass" in the genus of Situ in "Zhou Li, Diguan". Zheng Xuan Zhuyun: "Dyeing grass, blue, wolf, elephant bucket genus." "Qian" is also known as "Qian", referring to madder, also known as Ru Worm in ancient times, "The Book of Poetry, East Gate of the Pier" cloud "East Gate of the Pier, Ru Worm in Han", madder can be dyed red. The elephant bucket is also called a soap bucket, which is used to dye black.

The technology of plant dyeing was very mature in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, and the color vocabulary mentioned in the Book of Songs had five kinds of "green, green, silk, onion, and grass", indicating that the technology of color dyeing had appeared at that time.

Chromatic dyeing refers to the use of several dyes with different pigments to dye in succession, so as to dye the intercolor of these pigments. It is recorded in the "Examination Record": "Three into the line, five into the line, seven into the line." The "three", "five", and "seven" here refer to the number of dips in different dyes.

The interpretation of "纁" in the "Shuowen" is "shallow 绛也", "緅", the "Jade Chapter" is interpreted as "blue and red", and "缁" refers to black. Depending on the number of times the clothes are dyed, the color of the dyeing is also different.

There is also a record of mordant in the "Examination of the Work". 《? Under the article "Shi", there are words such as "seven days of soaking silk with water", "turning the column into ash", "day storm days", etc., which refer to the process of "?" soaking and drying silk with plant ash and drying silk, and the silk is bleached.

Silk is easier to color after refining, and the plant ash also has a mordant effect. The mordant commonly used in the Spring and Autumn Period is alum, which is recorded as "Nirvana" in the literature, and Nirvana is also a black dye.

In the Qin, Han, Wei and Jin dynasties, the technology of plant dyeing was further developed. The cultivation of dyes expanded, and people who made a living from the cultivation of dyed grass appeared.

"Historical Records: The Biography of Goods and Colonies" has "thousands of acres of gardenias, thousands of acres of ginger leeks, all of whom are based on thousands of households", "gardenia" refers to yellow gardenias, and "akane" refers to red madder, indicating the grand occasion of planting dyes at that time.

As the dyeing technique improves, the number of dyed colors increases accordingly. In "Urgency", there is "Yujin is half white?, and the ethereal green soap is purple." The chestnut silk is red and silky, and the green silk is moist and fresh.

Silk silk", which mentions more than a dozen color words such as tulip, silk, white, ethereal, and green. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Xu Shen's "Shuo Wen Jie Zi" contains more than 30 color names of silk fabrics.

In addition to the increase in the variety of dyes and the expansion of the color range, the preparation of plant dyes is also quite complete. Jia Siqian recorded the method of making indigo with blue grass in "Qi Min Yaoshu": "Cut indigo, put it upside down in a pit, go into the water, suppress it with wood and stone, and order it to be confiscated. When it is hot, stay overnight, and then stay when it is cold, remove the canadi, and the juice is in the urn. Rate ten stone urns, a bucket of lime and five liters, slam it, and stop eating it. Clarify, drain water. Don't make a small pit, store the blue lake in the pit. Waiting for a strong porridge, but also out of the urn to fill it, the blue lake into a place. The latest chapter of "Dream Claw Book House in the Great Era" is free to read for the first time.