| home | site map | bibliographies | country | forum | links | studies | what's new | photogalleries | about us |   powered by FreeFind

Ge Jia textiles: baby carriers

A batik baby carrier from Huangping county, Guizhou province, in the collection of Andrew Dudley. It was purchased in 2003 in Kaili and is probably mid 20th century. Note the three types of bird across the top of the carrier and two bats drawn in the wax resist in the outer triangles. This piece was posted by Andrew in response to an enquiry about motifs in Ge Jia wax resist. As Andrew commented, "people seem to resort to traditional Han patterns to explain minority patterns of uncertain design, meaning and origin. Thus, unidentifiable winged creatures are often explained away as bats (in Chinese, bat is bian fu and fu means rich, wealthy and abundant, so the bat has become an auspicious symbol)". "Some Ge Jia women/family groups say categorically there are no bats in their pattern repertoire, only different types of birds varying in their levels of abstraction, whilst others say there are not only birds and bats, but also frogs, snails, butterflies etc. and other, long forgotten types of animals. I tend to go along with the idea there are more than just birds represented in Ge Jia batik."
	image © Andrew Dudley
	Detail of Andrew's batik baby carrier