Luo gauze with embroidered and clamp resist dyed floral motifs

Two pieces of Jiaxie silk were sewn onto the fabric. The Chinese term for clamp resist, jiaxie, first appeared in Tang dynasty texts. According to one unofficial history, the technique was invented by the younger sister of a favorite concubine of the Xuanzong emperor: “She was a clever girl, and had a craftsman carve a wooden board with various patterns, and was able to recreate the patterns by means of clamp resist dying.” The term jiaxie appears frequently in Tang literature, where it refers to the technique of using two boards in which the patterns are carved back-to-back in mirror form. The cloth to be dyed is pressed between the two boards, whereupon dyes are injected into channels in the boards, coloring the unclamped areas but leaving the clamped areas undyed. The most advanced form of clamp resist dyeing is “one time multi-color dyeing,” in which different colored dyes are injected into separate areas of the same blocks. This method produces a multi-colored cloth without having to remove the cloth from the clamp for each color. But the number of colors used in Tang clamp resist dyeing is not necessarily the same as the number of distinct “color areas” in the actual woodblocks. In some cases, the block is carved with a single pattern, and after dyeing the cloth in one color, additional colors were added with a brush.