Dragon & Phoenix Indigo Wedding Cloth — Blue Resist-Printed Cotton
A complete large-format blue resist cloth with dragon and phoenix figures surrounding a central baoxiang-style peony roundel, a composition strongly associated with marriage, prosperity and a flourishing household.
- Object ID
- TA-CN-0008
- Origin
- China
- Period
- c. 1940s–1960s
- Dating confidence
- estimated
- Material
- Cotton
- Dimensions
- Approx. 210 × 82 cm
- Technique
- Blue resist printing / Lan Yin Hua Bu (蓝印花布)
- Pattern
- Dragon · Phoenix · Baoxiang-style peony roundel · Scrolling vines · Dotted folk borders
- Colours
- Indigo-style blue · Natural white
- Washed
- No
Object condition
Large complete vintage textile with two small holes and natural signs of age, storage and hand processing. The old blue surface is soft and matte rather than factory-uniform.
Identification notes
The pattern is resist printed rather than woven into the cloth. Pale motifs were protected before blue dyeing, producing the characteristic blue-and-white surface of 蓝印花布.
Dragon and phoenix figures surround a central baoxiang-style peony roundel, with curling ruyi-like vines, small flowers and dotted stencil details completing the composition.
The scale and balanced auspicious layout are consistent with wedding or household bedding cloth, but the original ceremonial use is inferred rather than documented.
The original listing identifies the piece broadly as Chinese; a more precise regional attribution remains open in the Atlas.
The cloth is documented as a whole piece rather than a small cutting, which preserves the overall decorative composition.
A complete dragon-phoenix-and-peony blessing field
The scale of the surviving composition makes it possible to read the relationship between dragon, phoenix, central peony roundel, vines and border motifs rather than seeing them only as isolated fragments.
Its dragon-and-phoenix pairing, central peony and large bedding-like format make it especially useful for studying how marriage-associated blessings could be organised across a complete household textile.
