The ancient dyeing technique of China was very superb and advanced. It could produce cloth with varied lustrous colors, and colors it dyed were not easy to wash out. Thus, this technique was called the mysterious Chinese art by Westerners. The dyeing methods roughly fell into four types: weaving of printed cloth , dye printing, embroidery and pattern drawing. 

 

Plant dyes were the dominant materials used for textile dyeing in ancient China. Chinese literary sources state that, as early as the Western Zhou Dynasty (1045–711 b.c.), a system of dyeing techniques was developed. The plant dyes used then include: 

 

blue: indigo (Polygonum tinctorium) 

red: madder (Rubia cordifolia) 

purple: gromwell (Lithospermum erythrorhizon) 

yellow: gardenia (Gardenia jasminoides Ellis) 

black: hazel bark (Corylus chinensis) 

 

During the Spring and Autumn Period (722–481 b.c.) and the Warring States Period (480–222 b.c.), mordant dying with plants containing tannic acid was widely used to yield black. The mordant employed was qing fan (iron salt). In addition to madder, safflower, which was introduced to China from the northwest tribes, became an important dyestuff during the Han Dynasty (202 b.c.–a.d. 220). It was taken to Japan in the Tang Dynasty (a.d. 618–960). During the Ming Dynasty (a.d. 1368–1644), numerous plants were employed from which dyes were extracted. In The Exploitation of the Works of Nature (Tian gong kai wu), Song Yingxing (b. 1587) reported four different plants from which indigo can be extracted, all widely planted as dyestuffs in China: 

 

song lan(also known as cha lan): Isatis tinctoria L. var. yezoensis (ohwi) Ohwim

liao lan(also known as xian lan): Polygonum tinctorium

ma lan (distributed in northern China): Indigofera tinctoria L. and Strobilanthes cusis (Nees) O. ktze

wu lan (distributed in southern China, also known as mu lan, huai lan): Indigofera tinctoria L
 

Chinese Blue Calico Printing and Chinese Wax Printing are the major two types of Traditional Chinese Dyes. These natural indigos were not only used in China but also exported to Europe before synthetic organic dyes were developed.

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