The Restoration And Research Of Clouding Silk-cotton Cloth Blouse With Shadow Quadri-united Ruyi Pattern

In 2001, the Ming Dynasty seignior Ningjing’s wife—Wu’s tomb in Nanchang,Jiangxi Province, which was keep in good condition, unearthed a large number of fine silk fabric and jewelry, and provided important information of Ming Dynasty clothing’s research for us. Unearthed textile was repaired ten years ago, the Ancient Textile Archaeology Department, Institute of Archaeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences had the secondary repair. In 2013, I had a chance to follow in teacher—Wang Yarong of Archaeology to learn, involved in the protection and restoration of the project.The paper is based on the research of a silk-cotton cloth blouse with shadow quadri-united Ruyi pattern, which was in the unearthed textile. First of all, protecting and repairing it; then using the method of “experimental archaeology” to recover and research it; last, combined with the economy, consumption level, social custom of Ming Dynasty, using the method of material cultural history to investigate the cloth’s fabric, ornamentation, shape and the related problems.Since this is the second repair, before the repair, we’d to remove traces of improper repair, then in accordance with the sequence of cleaning, shaping, and strengthening to repair the blouse. The restoration was adopt physical methods, conforms to the“minimal intervention principle” and “reversible principle” of cultural relic repair.Strengthening processes are mainly used the method of silk, net, needle and thread.Then using the method of experimental archaeology to 1:1 recover the blouse. All these production processes are performed manually. The purpose of this recovery is to study the blouse of Ming Dynasty’s shape, tailoring and sewing process, etc.The blouse’s ornamentation is Quadri-united Ruyi clouding, which was the most popular in Ming Dynasty. This paper examines the formation process of the ornamentation in the Ming Dynasty. The blouse’s fabric is in silk warp and cotton weft organization, which is very rare. This kind of cloth is called “delicatel cloth” or silk-cotton cloth. The paper put forward the original opinion toward the produce,production area and popular time of the beautiful cloth. This blouse’s shape is right overlapping part of Chinese short gown, top sleeve, which is a common female gown shape before the mid of Ming dynasty. But in Middle-late Ming dynasty, with the social consumption level’s improvement, the whole society permeated the vogue of showing off, arrogation, novelty seeking. This phenomenon leads to rapid changes in clothing fashion. In the end of the paper I discussed the impact of social fashion on clothing shape.