Craft & Making
Chinese Blue Printed Cloth: More Than One Printing Tradition
Explore Chinese blue printed cotton, Nantong paste-resist dyeing, handwoven tubu, and why vintage cloth can reflect different printing traditions.
Stories
Knowledge that stays useful.
Evergreen pages connect terminology, regions and making processes back to real textile records.
Craft & Making · Traditional weaving
From Cotton to Cloth — The Making of Chinese Homespun
Discover how traditional Chinese homespun cotton was made, from preparing fibres and spinning yarn to warping and handloom weaving, with original Nantong textile examples.
Patterns & Meanings · Fruit symbolism
Three Abundances — The Wish for a Blessed Life
Why peaches, pomegranates and Buddha’s hand are known as the Three Abundances — and how a vintage Nantong fruit-basket cloth tells a related story of blessing.
Symbols in Indigo · Folk legend
Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea: The Story Behind the Indigo Figures
The Eight Immortals sea-crossing legend, eight emblems and original indigo textile, plus a documented Nantong bed-canopy valance with the Three Star Gods.
Symbols in Indigo · Motif study
Ping Sheng San Ji 平升三级: A Wish for Advancement in Chinese Folk Art
How a vase, a sheng musical instrument and three halberds become a traditional Chinese wish for advancement, illustrated through an old indigo folk textile.
Symbols in Indigo · Motif study
Hidden Eight Immortals 暗八仙: Eight Emblems, Eight Stories in Chinese Textiles
Discover the eight objects that represent the legendary Chinese Eight Immortals, the sea-crossing story, and how to read their symbols in old indigo folk textiles.
Motif study
Peony 牡丹: From National Beauty to Chinese Folk Textiles
Trace the peony from Tang and Song literary culture to auspicious design and vintage Chinese folk textiles, with examples from multicolour printing, blue resist and Tubu Atlas study pieces.
Motif study
Die Lian Hua 蝶恋花: Butterflies Among Flowers in Chinese Folk Textiles
Explore Die Lian Hua, the butterfly-and-flower motif across vintage Chinese textiles, from Nantong multicolour prints and indigo-resist cloth to ramie summer cloth and study fragments.
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? A Guide to Chinese Homespun Cloth
What is tubu? Explore Chinese homespun cloth through spinning, weaving, regional traditions, household use, trade and surviving textile records.
Technique
Loom Tiaohua 织机挑花: Hand Pick-Up Weaving in Jiangnan Homespun Cloth
Explore loom tiaohua (织机挑花), a hand pick-up weaving practice in Jiangnan homespun, and learn how it differs from treadle figuring, drawloom weaving and tiaohua embroidery.
Technique & region
Nantong Printed Cottons: Indigo Resist, Colour Printing and a Regional Textile Tradition
Explore Nantong printed cotton textiles, from indigo-resist blue calico to later colour-printed cloth, and how printing transformed woven cotton into household textiles.
Region
Nantong Textile Traditions
A framework for documenting the weaving and printed-cloth traditions represented in the Nantong group.
Region
Shanghai & Pudong Homespun
A page for the Shanghai-area cloth group.
Material & method
Reading Hand-Spun Cotton
A visual-reading framework for yarn irregularity, texture, width and other clues recorded in old cloth.