Qilin Bringing a Child — Nantong Indigo Textile
c. 1950s · Homespun cotton
Cloth · People · Places · Time
An Atlas of Chinese Homespun Textiles
Documenting handwoven cloth, patterns and the stories carried in every thread.
What is Tubu?
More than “vintage fabric.”
Tubu Atlas treats each textile as a documented object. Region, period, yarn, weave, printing, motif, condition and dimensions remain attached to the record even after a piece is sold.
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A new way to wander · 云上布店Make yourself
Make yourself
at home.
Take a cloth off the shelf. Unroll it. Imagine what it could become.
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Explore by region
Start geographically, then move across technique, pattern and period.
Making
Explore by technique
The same region can hold many different making processes.
Featured object
A permanent object record
Availability can change. The archive record stays.
TA-SH-0001
Hai Shang Ji Hua — Shanghai Shepherd’s Purse Picked-Weave Textile
- Region
- Shanghai
- Period
- c. 1940s–1960s
- Material
- Cotton
- Dimensions
- Approx. 200 × 41 cm
A rare Shanghai-area tiaohua cloth in which tiny four-petal flowers are woven directly into a deep blue checked ground rather than printed or embroidered on the surface.
View textile record →Documentation
Newly documented
Recent additions, whether available or already archived.
Four Seasons Weave — One Continuous Jiangnan Textile
c. 1960s–1970s · Cotton
Gentle Current — Jiangnan Wooden Comb Check
c. 1940s–1960s · Cotton
Starlit Tide — Chongming Dotted-Stripe Tubu
c. 1950s–1970s · Handspun-style cotton
Shop
Textiles on Etsy
Explore the cloth and its story here. Visit the Etsy listing for current availability, price and delivery details.
Four Seasons Weave — One Continuous Jiangnan Textile
c. 1960s–1970s · Cotton
One uncut, 6.5-metre Jiangnan cotton textile changes from indigo stripes to red-blue checks and denser plaid, with no joining seams between its woven sections.
Gentle Current — Jiangnan Wooden Comb Check
c. 1940s–1960s · Cotton
Soft red and indigo lines form a large square grid around fine comb-like inner stripes in this substantial, softly structured Jiangnan homespun cotton.
Hai Shang Ji Hua — Shanghai Shepherd’s Purse Picked-Weave Textile
c. 1940s–1960s · Cotton
A rare Shanghai-area tiaohua cloth in which tiny four-petal flowers are woven directly into a deep blue checked ground rather than printed or embroidered on the surface.
Four Seasons Flowers — Nantong Indigo Quilt Cover
c. 1950s–1960s · Homespun cotton
A large three-panel household quilt cover whose resist-printed Four Seasons flowers and historic patch repair preserve both auspicious symbolism and the evidence of long domestic use.
Journal
Stories from the Atlas
Evergreen knowledge pages designed to support both research and search discovery.
Culture & meaning
Cloth, Household, Hope
A Tubu Atlas perspective on Chinese homespun: household weaving, dowry, local style, women’s labour and the auspicious wishes carried in cloth.
Start here
What Is Tubu?
An introduction to locally spun and woven cloth traditions in China, and how Tubu Atlas uses the term.
Region
Nantong Textile Traditions
A framework for documenting the weaving and printed-cloth traditions represented in the Nantong group.
Archive
Sold pieces do not disappear
Objects remain searchable after sale, preserving photography, attribution and notes.
Qilin Bringing a Child — Nantong Indigo Textile
c. 1950s · Homespun cotton
Our approach
Document first. Attribute carefully.
Each record separates observable facts from attribution. Confidence can be confirmed, probable, estimated or under review, so the archive can improve without losing its history.
How we document →