*Watered Gauze Dyeing ＆ Finishing Technique

95.*Watered Gauze Dyeing ＆ Finishing Technique

Nominating Unit: Shunde District, City of Foshan

Shunde Watered Gauze, formerly known as Watered Gauze and commonly referred to as Gensha Silk, is a special silk fabric which is famous all over the world. Shunde District in City of Foshan, located in water network zone in the Pearl River Delta, has a long history in mulberry trees planting, silkworm breeding and silk reeling. Ever after the mid-Qing Dynasty, with the increase of foreign trade in Guangzhou, the silk reeling industry in Shunde flourished. In the early years of the Republic of China, Watered Gauze came into being. With its distinguished quality, it quickly became popular and was exported to Europe, America, India, Southeast Asia. As a product of the combination of favorable natural conditions and unique dyeing and finishing techniques, Watered Gauze has been hailed as “a pioneering work with epoch-making significance and far-reaching historical infl uence in Guangdong Province silk industry”. Due to the world economic crisis occurring in 1930s and the invention of the artificial silk, Guangdong Province silk industry suffered a drastic decline. However, Watered Gauze Dyeing ＆ Finishing technique in Shunde survived from the severe impact and is still developing today.

Shunde Watered Gauze dyes the silk fabric with pure vegetable dye, which is rare in the world. It adopts silk fabric and plain fabric as greig and undergoes complicated processing of special dyeing and fi nishing before it comes into being. Its main dye is the juice from the stem of Dioscorea Cirrhosa (Shu Lang) which is a perennial vine plant. The process flow consists of over 10 procedures: immersing in Dioscorea Cirrhosa juice, air curing, sprinkling Dioscorea Cirrhosa juice, sealing Dioscorea Cirrhosa juice, boiling off, rolling fabric, mudding, washing, sun curing, softening, stentering, packaging, etc. The operational procedures are very strict and complicated. First, putting the silk fabric into the Dioscorea Cirrhosa juice with the highest concentration for half a day. One has to keep agitating the fabric during the course. Then sprinkling and smearing the Dioscorea Cirrhosa juice onto the fabric for 6 times before immersing it in the Dioscorea Cirrhosa juice for 20 times. During this process, the fabric has to be boiled off in the Dioscorea Cirrhosa juice at 45-50 degrees centigrade. Mudding is the most critical procedure in the whole course. First, one has to stir the pure grey-black river mud into paste and smear it onto the fabric which has immersed for many times. And a chemical reaction will occur between the tannin in Dioscorea Cirrhosa juice and ferric ion in river mud, which dyes the fabric into black and brown. This operation must be carried out at night, be completed before dawn, so as to prevent the sunlight from turning the underside into black. After mudding, washing and sun curing, one has to soften the fabric by putting it on the lawn at the dusk(it become soft through absorbing the water from the grass). The whole course takes 15 days during which there are as much as dozens of times of immersing, sprinkling, sealing, spoiling and washing. Each step has strict time control. The fabric should be sun cured on the sandy ground with thick-planted grass between each procedure. The repeated and sufficient sunlight catalyzes the bright color into being. Beside the Dioscorea Cirrhosa dye and a unique set of dyeing and finishing techniques that the production of Watered Gauze needs, Shunde also has the essential river mud, lawn and sunshine. Therefore, it is not a coincidence that the Watered Gauze came into being in Shunde.(https://www.daowen.com)

Shunde Watered Gauze, the hand-dyed work, is light, thin, soft, cool, sweat-resistant, easy to wash, quick-dried and is exquisite summer clothing suitable for tropical and sub-tropical regions. Watered Gauze also has a metal and pearl-like luster and the clothes made of it are hailed by the overseas as “the Shining Black Pearl”. What’s more, the longer the storage or the wearing of it, the softer, brighter and more comfortable it will be. Shunde Watered Gauze dyeing and finishing technique is entirely manual and so far cannot be substituted by modern technology machinery. It is highly representative with high technological value. It was enlisted into the list of the second batch of state-level intangible cultural heritage.

At present, only Chengyi Shailang Factory in Lunjiao Street of Shunde District inherits the Watered Gauze dyeing and finishing technique. However, due to the high production cost, small output, monotony of the color and the constant emergence of new type of garment fabric, the development of Watered Gauze has shown a declining trend. Besides, many people are deterred by the labour-intensive operation and there is no succession. There is an urgent need to support and protect Watered Gauze Dye ＆ Finish Technique.