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Ge Jia textiles: jackets

The Ge Jia are artists in the use of wax resist (batik) using the wax knife to create very fine white and indigo fabric. They are also expert embroiderers using rich coloured threads - usually of silk. The Chinese authorities classify the Ge Jia as a Miao sub-group but they like to think of themselves as a separate ethnic group. There is a concentration of Ge Jia in the south east of Guizhou province in Huangping county and around Kaili city.

There is very little published material on the textiles of the Ge Jia and it is a priviledge to be able to see such a large group of these finely drawn and beautifully balanced textiles which were originally posted on the www.tribaltextiles.info/community forum run from this website. The majority of the textiles are from the collection of Andrew Dudley, with a contribution from Bill Hornaday. (For up-to-date access to Ge Jia threads go to the forum and click on 'Search' - one of the top right hand buttons on the forum screen - and input 'Ge Jia').

for further photogalleries of Ge Jia textiles see Ge Jia textiles: baby carriers and Ma Tang village, Kaili city. Also see an interesting forum thread on dating provenance
Click on thumbnail to go to enlargement - click on enlargement to return to photogallery
images © Andrew Dudley

to Jpeg 59K 45-J1 This Ge Jia jacket is made using two lengths of hand spun and woven (tu bu) cotton joined up the back and has a similar pattern to that shown in the Gina Corrigan/British Museum "Miao Textiles from China" book. Although the workmanship is good, the pattern is quite simple.

to Jpeg 58K 47 J2 This Ge Jia jacket, made using hand spun and woven (tu bu) cotton, has fine batik work, which, due to the difficulty in creating fine lines on the coarse cloth, would have required great skills to achieve.

to Jpeg 59K 49 J3 This Ge Jia jacket is earlier that the other two in this row of the photogallery (probably early 20th century) showing a traditional pattern on a single piece of market bought machine-made (yang bu) cotton which allows for much finer work.

to Jpeg 57K 51 J4 This Ge Jia jacket is made of market bought machine-made (yang bu) cotton and has some quite delicate batik work. The pattern includes many small birds which are highly prized as they relate to an ancient Gejia legend.

to Jpeg 59K 33 J5This Ge Jia jacket is made of bought, machine made (yangbu), cloth and is probably from the second quarter of the 20th Century.

to Jpeg 60K 37 J6 This Ge Jia jacket is made of bought, machine-made (yangbu), cloth. The seller said that it was made in about 1910.

to Jpeg 68K 30 J7 The wax resist on this Ge Jia Jacket is executed on a bought piece of heavy and course machine-made (yangbu) cloth and is probably mid 20th Century. This jacket was bought by Andrew without sleeves or lower back panels. Often, the women selling their textiles will want to keep a part of the piece as a connection with the past and because the piece was made as a labour of love and they are desperate not to give it all up. So, jackets are sometimes sold without sleeves, or more usually with lesser quality sleeves. Likewise, baby carriers very rarely come with the original straps/bands. Assuming the jacket is sold in its original condition, dealers will then often cannibalise them in order to maximize profits, so again, good sleeves might be replaced with lesser versions. Also, mothers, grandmothers and even other female relatives might help a girl with her sets of wedding clothes by providing a batik jacket to go with the girls sleeves or the other way round, embroidered sleeves to be put on the girls jacket, and so jackets, even in their original form, could be a combination of more than one generation. One is therefore very lucky to buy a jacket that has not been altered and has been made by a single person.

to Jpeg 64K 46 J8 This Ge Jia jacket has been waxed on two pieces of hand-spun and woven cloth (tu bu).

to Jpeg 52K 32 ej1 In order to illustrate the skill required to create fine batik, Andrew has shown us five examples from his collection of what can go wrong when making batik jackets. (Shown as lilne four of the jackets in the photogallery.) The first jacket below shows how difficult it is to correct mistakes that are made during the drawing of the wax patterns (unless they are completely blanked out/covered over with wax). Unlike embroidery and weaving, mistakes with wax cannot easily be undone, since, although the surface wax can be scraped off, there will always be traces that have soaked into the cloth that cannot be removed, and after dying, leave a shadowy image as seen in the 8 small squares in the centre of this jacket back.

to Jpeg 66K 42 ej2 In order to illustrate the skill required to create fine batik, Andrew has shown us five examples from his collection of what can go wrong when making batik jackets. (Shown as line four of the jackets in the photogallery.) This jacket illustrates what happens if the cloth is folded or crumpled too much after waxing but before dying. The wax will crack, allowing the dye to penetrate into the cloth, leaving the thin blue lines across the pattern (called “ice lines”), and/or, areas of wax will be loosened, giving a blurred and indistinct white pattern.

to Jpeg 61K 41 ej3 In order to illustrate the skill required to create fine batik, Andrew has shown us five examples from his collection of what can go wrong when making batik jackets. (Shown as line four of the jackets in the photogallery.) This jacket is just an example of wobbly straight lines and an inconsistent, unsymmetrical design.

to Jpeg 59K 18 ej4 In order to illustrate the skill required to create fine batik, Andrew has shown us five examples from his collection of what can go wrong when making batik jackets. (Shown as line four of the jackets in the photogallery.) This jacket illustrates that it can even be difficult to ensure the two pieces of home spun/woven (tu bu) cloth making up the jacket are actually the same length.

to Jpeg 61K 17 ej5 In order to illustrate the skill required to create fine batik, Andrew has shown us five examples from his collection of what can go wrong when making batik jackets. (Shown as line four of the jackets in the photogallery.) The final jacket in the series is simply a tragic case, with different lengths of cloth, unmatched patterns across the two pieces of cloth, inconsistent pattern styles and areas where the wax has been loosened, resulting in blurred areas of pattern (a pity, since the batik work is actually pretty good).
image© Bill Hornaday

 
Click on thumbnail to go to enlargement - click on enlargement to return to photogallery
We are particularly indebted to Andrew Dudley for sharing his considerable knowledge of Ge Jia textiles with us on the forum. He currently lives in Taiwan and has been collecting textiles since 1996. His collection, from south east Guizhou, consists mainly of batik but with some embroidery, predominantly of the Ge Jia, White Collar (Bailing) Miao and Rao Jia. See Ge Jia textiles: baby carriers for another photogallery containing more of the fine Ge Jia textiles from Andrew's (and Bill's) collections which were originally posted on the forum. Contact Andrew or Bill.

If you have any Ge Jia textiles in your own collection, especially any jackets, do share them and add to this on-line resource by joining the forum and posting photos and any information that you have on the textiles.

see photogalleries of Ge Jia textiles: baby carriers and Ge Jia in Ma Tang village, Kaili city. Also see an interesting forum thread on dating provenance
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this page last updated 4 October, 2013