Ditan Weaving Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
During the Tang dynasty, both imperial courts and the residences of the wealthy laid out carpets. In the Yuan dynasty, influenced by the Mongolian way of life, the imperial court established workshops for sheared floral carpets, among others. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, carpet weaving in Gansu, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Beijing, and other places developed rapidly. The carpet-manufacturing industry of Alxa has a long history, roughly beginning in the early years of the Qianlong reign of the Qing dynasty, and it has been over 270 years to this day. By the 1940s, the Dingyuan Camp in Alxa Left Banner had more than twenty carpet workshops, and the carpets they wove were renowned throughout Inner Mongolia and across the country.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The handcraft of hand-knotted wool pile carpet weaving is a Chinese manual craft rich in ethnic character; it coils wool yarn into knots that are looped onto a carpet base woven from interlacing cotton warp and weft threads, forming a raised pile surface. Carpet weaving with wool yarn in China began roughly in the Neolithic period. The two-ply wool pile carpets unearthed from the Lop Nur area of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and from a Han-dynasty tomb in Minfeng County show that carpet weaving had already reached a high level by the Eastern Han period. The craft of carpet weaving comprises stages such as design, weaving, surface leveling, clipping (cutting flat patterns into three-dimensional relief with scissors), washing, and finishing. Some of the wool yarn used for weaving is still dyed with ancient plant-based dyes. Chinese carpets are not only daily necessities for ethnic-minority communities but are also exported abroad in large quantities. Carpet patterns draw on the characteristics of ancient bronzes, embroidery, brocade, porcelain, and other decorative arts, while carpets of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Tibet each display their own distinct artistic features. The carpet-weaving craft of Alxa Left Banner, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, inherits the traditions of Arabian carpets and Beijing-style palace carpets, stands unique in the weaving industry, and is celebrated for its fine, distinctive workmanship and simple, elegant patterns. Alxa Left Banner lies north of the desert; its dry soil yields local wool that is coarse and white with excellent physical properties, giving the carpets a sturdy, elastic, strong-tensile, and lustrous character. The carpet-weaving craft of Alxa Left Banner is complex; from design to completion it passes through process stages including conception and design, weaving, leveling, clipping, washing, and antiquing. Its representative product, the "Three Blues" (three shades of blue) antique-style carpet, uses the blue of the vast sky and the yellow of the rich earth as its main tones, employing the knotting craft passed down among the folk for thousands of years to meticulously weave imitations of court patterns.
Designing the carpet
Size, drawing, colour scheme and yarn count come first; antique folk and court patterns supply the motifs.
Knotting the pile
Wool loops knotted onto a cotton ground form the pile; the coarse white local fleece gives stiffness, strength and sheen.
Levelling the pile
Levelling evens the pile and clipping raises the pattern in relief; the two steps set the depth of shading.
Washing and finishing
After dyeing with old-style plant colours the carpet is washed, dried, trimmed and finished to a clean sheen.
The three-blue antique carpet
Three depths of blue with earth-yellow, knotted by an ancient method and patterned after court designs.
Liu Fuguo's antique carpets
Trained by Liu Pengcheng from 1958, he mastered the whole process; his horses tapestry was exhibited in Beijing and won a national award.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The emergence of this antique-style carpet is closely tied to the Mongolian lifestyle and their psychological preference for the color blue; it reveals the regional ecological culture and aesthetic sensibility of western Inner Mongolia and serves as a microcosm of Mongolian cultural history.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Ditan Weaving Craftsmanship · Ditan Weaving Craftsmanship · Ditan Weaving Craftsmanship · Ditan Weaving Craftsmanship · Ditan Weaving Craftsmanship · Ditan Weaving Craftsmanship.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Liu Fuguo (per the official archives of the associated inheritor): male, Han ethnicity, born July 1943, a native of Alxa Left Banner, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Representative inheritor of the third national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage item "Carpet Weaving Craft (Alxa Carpet Weaving Craft)." An Alxa carpet-weaving technician. In 1958 he studied carpet making under Liu Pengcheng, an old artisan of Alxa antique carpets, and has continuously engaged in Alxa antique carpet production. He has successively worked in carpet leveling, color matching, yarn dyeing, and weaving, and has fairly comprehensively mastered the entire carpet-weaving process. His weaving is tight, his patterns grand and imposing, his works antique in flavor and refined in taste, bearing ethnic style and local character. After retirement he continued to teach apprentices in his own workshop. His works include "Two Dragons Playing with a Pearl," "Nine Dragons Churning the Sea," "Descending Tiger," "Dragon Embracing a Pillar," and "Camel and Horse Saddle Blanket," among others. In 1967 the tapestry "Eight Steeds," based on a work by master Xu Beihong and completed with others, was exhibited and collected by the Beijing Art Gallery. In 1990 the antique carpet he helped produce won the China Arts and Crafts Hundred Flowers Award issued by the Ministry of Light Industry. His works have also received autonomous-region awards on multiple occasions.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Kang Yusheng 03-1367
- Liu Fuguo 03-1368
- Maitusong Tudi 03-1369
- Wang Guoying 05-2806
- Liu Jingbo 05-2807
- Li Yukun
- Lu Xingqiong
- Duan Lizhen
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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