Nantong blue calico comes from Nantong of Jiangsu province. It is a kind of folk handicrafts with Jiangnan characteristics, which is made by the traditional Chinese hollow version of white pulp dyeing printing process. It has a history over 1300 years and has been included in the first batch of “National Intangible Cultural Heritage List.”
Jiangsu Nantong is located in the beautiful and rich Yangtze River Delta, with the Yellow Sea on its east and the Yangtze River on its south. It is blessed with temperate climate, beautiful scenery, numerous people and plentiful products and has always been a place of talented people, forming a unique regional culture and customs. Nantong people have created and developed a rich, colorful and famous Chinese folk arts and crafts in thousands of years and the blue calico is only one of them.
The blue calico is made from lime and bean flour synthetic mortar and it is baked into blue and made of multi-channel printing and dyeing techniques by using cotton, hand-woven, engraving and squeegee. People make blue calico cloths for clothes, blankets, bags, headscarves, curtains, and other daily necessities. It is well received since it is simple and generous with fresh and bright colors and simple patterns.
The blue calico has spread up to now; the contemporary folk craftsmen have made innovations and have transformed it from a single home-made cloth to a variety of fabrics, from practical daily necessities to kinds of types of practice and ornament, from the rural fields to the urban metropolis. It has earned the affections of more and more people.
