Vintage Chinese Blue Jiaxie Wedding Quilt Face – Drama Pattern

Chinese Blue Jiaxie Textile – Traditional Drama Pattern

A striking Blue Jiaxie (蓝夹缬) textile from the Wenzhou area of southern Zhejiang, China, made in the traditional style of the region’s blue-and-white wedding quilt faces.

Size: 225cm x 200cm (88” x 78”)

Blue Jiaxie is an extraordinary form of carved-board resist dyeing. Long lengths of cotton are folded and tightly clamped between intricately carved wooden boards before being repeatedly immersed in blue dye, creating the detailed blue-and-white designs.

This piece features the same 16-panel drama pattern as an older Blue Jiaxie wedding quilt face in our collection, with theatrical characters and scenes alongside traditional auspicious imagery. Drama-patterned Jiaxie was particularly associated with the Wenzhou region, where these textiles formed part of local wedding traditions.

This example appears more recent than our other piece and may be a later reproduction of an older traditional design. Unlike the older example, it doesn't appear ever to have been made up into a quilt: the cut ends are neatly finished and we can find no evidence of previous attachment to a backing. We haven't been able to establish its exact date, so we're selling it simply as a fascinating example of the tradition that has become a very rare craft.

The blue colour is very stable and the textile is machine washable, making it a wonderfully usable piece as well as an interesting example of this unusual textile tradition.

Origin: Wenzhou region, southern Zhejiang, China
Date: Unknown; probably later production in a traditional design
Material: Cotton
Technique: Blue Jiaxie / Lan Jiaxie (蓝夹缬), carved-board clamp-resist dyeing