Blue cloth with floral patterns

Blue flowered cloth

　　Blue calico is a traditional resist-dyeing textile from Hangzhou, Zhejiang. It is produced using a traditional carved-block technique with a white paste resist, also known as indigo-dyed cloth. Commonly called "medicine-spot cloth" or "poured-flower cloth," this fabric has a history spanning 1,300 years. Originally dyed with indigo plants, blue calico is crafted through a meticulous process involving all-cotton material, full handcrafting, block carving, and paste application. It was once a widely popular traditional hand-dyed fabric among the folk communities of southern China. Its rustic yet elegant cultural charm stands out uniquely in Chinese folk art, exuding the captivating fragrance of Eastern culture even after a thousand years.

　　Blue calico is a long-standing traditional hand-dyed textile product. Legend has it that a young man surnamed Mei accidentally fell into a muddy patch, staining his clothes yellow. No matter how hard he washed them, the color wouldn’t come out—but people who saw the yellow fabric actually liked it. He then told his good friend, surnamed Ge, about the incident. Later, the two began specializing in dyeing cloth yellow. Then, by a curious coincidence, while drying some cloth on tree branches, the wind blew one piece onto the ground—right onto a pile of polygonum tinctorium (a plant also known as dyer’s knotweed or, in modern terms, the source of isatis root). This plant contains a component called indigo, which can dye cloth blue. When they found the cloth again, the yellow had turned into a multicolored pattern—"blue here, indigo there." They suspected the secret lay in the plant. After many more experiments, the pair finally succeeded in dyeing cloth solid blue. Thus, the two gentlemen, Mei and Ge, became revered as the founding masters of blue calico.