Wu Yuanxin
Lineage & School of Heritage
Wu Yuanxin is the fifth-generation inheritor of the Wu family's blue calico printing and dyeing craft. He grew up from childhood in an environment of spinning, weaving, printing, and dyeing, and at the age of seventeen entered a folk printing and dyeing workshop, where he studied printing and dyeing and the cutting of pattern blocks under the printing master Lu Caitao and the block-carving master Huang Zhiping.
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
Male, of the Han ethnic group, born in 1960, a native of Nantong, Jiangsu. A national representative bearer of the Nantong Blue Calico Printing and Dyeing Craftsmanship, a first-batch national intangible cultural heritage project, and a Master of Chinese Arts and Crafts. For more than thirty years Wu Yuanxin has devoted himself wholeheartedly to this work, preserving and systematically arranging a large body of blue calico works of high artistic value that had been scattered among the people, together with their working processes. In 2005 he published Zhongguo Lanyinhuabu Wenyang Daquan (A Comprehensive Collection of Chinese Blue Calico Patterns), filling a gap in the monographic literature on blue calico patterns in China. While inheriting the tradition, he has continually adapted to the needs of the times, creating a polychrome series of blue calico whose works present a distinctive artistic effect in black, white, and grey. In addition to actively holding blue calico exhibitions within China, he has traveled repeatedly to countries including the United States, Germany, and Japan to promote Nantong blue calico abroad, making a contribution to the flourishing of ethnic and folk art. He also independently runs a blue calico art museum. His representative works include Nian Nian You Yu (Abundance Year After Year), Shuangyu Taibu Gongyi Xilie (Double-Fish Tablecloth Craft Series), and Xi Xiangfeng Zhuozhun Xilie (Joyful Reunion Table Runner Series).
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
Profile
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript. Compiled from official national representative bearer archival records, organized by topic and translated into English. 阅读中文版。