It took 20 years to travel through the villages of Rongjiang to develop China's own blue indigo dyeing spectrum, so that the fabric returned to the most natural and authentic state of tradition.
Guizhou Qiandongnan Dong ethnic village, has the reputation of "the world's first Dong village", the old houses are in pieces, ancient trees towering in the sky. In the Dong tradition, when a child is born, the grandmother uses Dong cloth to make a carrier for her grandson; when the girl marries, the mother uses the Dong cloth to make a wedding dress for her daughter, hand-woven cloth, and dyes grass and trees, which is a precious memory that belongs to the village.
Lai Lei is a member of the Dong ethnic group, the first college student in the village, graduated from the Yunnan Academy of Arts majoring in oil painting. She grew up listening to the sound of her mother weaving cloth, and when she left home for school, her mother gave her a hundred hand-woven pieces of fine Dong cloth. At first she was not interested in Dong Bu at all, and even used it as a canvas. Until she heard that the current weavers were using a chemical reagent called "magenta" to replace the traditional plant dye dye dyeing cloth, and the number of weavers who would make cloth in the village had long been counted, Lai Lei knew how precious the Dong cloth left by her mother was.
In order not to let these precious and beautiful Dong cloth be lost, Lai Lei bought Dong cloth from her own pocket and tried to promote it with her own strength, more in, less sold, the cloth sent by the villagers piled up the house, and she also owed a huge amount of 3 million yuan. Persistent people never give up.
Lai Lei spent more than 20 years walking through the villages of Rongjiang, collecting countless samples of Dong cloth, and making detailed files for each kind of cloth. And began to study the dyeing and weaving of Dong cloth, want to return the cloth to the most natural, authentic state, so she has high requirements for the pigment of cloth dyeing, must use pure grass and wood dyes such as peel, traditional Chinese medicine, tree root bark, etc., without any chemical agents, there are more than 30 processes in this link of dyeing cloth alone.
Once she, like everyone else, thought that the light color was dyed a few times less, and the dark color could be dyed a few times more times, and only after the real production did she find that it was not like this at all. The final color of the dyeing cloth is closely related to the data such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, soaking time, and wax temperature. The dye shop she built hung a thermometer and hygrometer, and her "Blue Dye Diary" book recorded a dense collection of data. From the choice of indigo mud, to the choice of dyeing cylinder material, to the weather, water temperature, humidity, etc. of the dyeing cloth, Lai Lei has carried out a lot of data collection and analysis.
Three years of data accumulation gave her enough factual basis to discover the "secret" of blue dyeing. "The color of the cloth in spring is a bit tender green, which is softer. The summer weather is hot, and many times the fabric is gray, "Lai Lei said", and the autumn blue is the blue that everyone yearns for the most, there are ordinary blue, sea blue, sky blue, blue through the green. ”
I hope that the international community can have China's own color card, and the development of China's blue indigo dyeing spectrum has always been Lai Lei's original intention of doing twenty-four solar terms, which also means that all kinds of blues can be copied. Therefore, in 2017, when Lai Lei successfully dyed the cloth with 24 different blues in the 24 solar terms such as the spring equinox and the valley rain, she would be particularly happy. She named it "Indigo 24 Solar Terms", a group of Dong cloths that are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Chinese Nationalities. The museum spoke highly of him: "Inheriting traditional ideas and craftsmanship techniques, it has both scientific, artistic and aesthetic value." ”
Lai Lei's improved Dong native cloth has attracted the attention of many international designers, and when cooperating with luxury brands, Lai Lei combines Dong native cloth with cowhide to make a Dong hand-woven saddle bag and small square bag with unique characteristics, which has been well received by many people, so that the restored ancient colors show different possibilities.
What is touching is a sentence she said from the perspective of dyeing cloth: I am the color of the people, and I feel that I am the blue of Chinese.
Images from the Internet If infringing, please contact us in time
Producer - Wang Bo Editor-in-Chief - Liu Aiping
Chief Executive Officer │ Wang Mudao Chief Reporter - Leshui
Edited by Fang Hua, Cao Xinyu, Wang Yizhu
Visual Director - Du Fang Video Producer - Li Xiaojiao Design - Liu Yao Li Xinyu
In addition to the content is the original noon culture reprint please contact the picture from the network If it involves infringement, please contact us in time