Analyzing And Imitating On Silk Fabrics From Unearthed Robe In The Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty is the heyday of the development of silk technology.Unearthed silk is the most realistic evidence of studying on silk fabric origin,development and silk technology and silk art.The two private collection robes of the Ming Dynasty is deeply analyzed and researched on fiber identification,aging analysis,dating,fabric structure,color restoration,fabric restoration and imitation,etc.The following conclusions were got.Observed by scanning electron microscope,the fibers of unearthed robe fabric were propinquity triangle in cross-section,smooth in longitudinal surface and uneven in fineness.The characteristic peaks of 970cm^-1 and 990cm^-1 were identified as mulberry silk in the infra-red spectrogram.The 14C dating data reveals that the unearthed robe fabric come from early Ming Dynasty.The fiber fineness of the silk samples in Ming Dynasty was smaller than the modern silk.The phenomena of decay,brittle fracture and splitting appear,showing different types of fracture reveal that the fiber has been aged seriously.The decreasing of the peaks in the infra-red absorption,especially absorption peaks at 1260cm^-1 and 3276 cm^-1,show that the fibroin molecules of silk in the Ming Dynasty suffered more serious damage.In order to restore the traditional color,referring to the ancient dyeing process,the methods including single dyeing,multiple dyeing,mordant dyeing,repetitious dyeing,mixed dyeing,vat dyeing were tried and 260 colors were dyed out.The following conclusions are obtained by analysis these colors.The colors are darker by multiple dyeing,the color gradient by multi-concentration dyeing is more noticeable than the multiple dyeing.The mordant dyeing is mainly used in yellow and the change of color value was positively correlated with dyeing times and concentration.So is the variation of the black line.The dyeing process of green and a small amount of red is set dye method.And yellow and blue tones in the green line are determined by the indigo concentration and yellow tones.The red line by repetitious dyeing is more pure.The depth of the blue line was positively correlated with the number of staining and the concentration of the staining.In this article,the weave structure,pattern and color on three classic Ming Dynasty robe fabric have been analyzed,including a shadow silk fabric with twill weave,a scrolling lotus brocade and a jacquard leno fabric.The three classic fabrics were imitated by the modern technology according to the results of the material analysis and the color research of the Ming Dynasty silk fabric.There are three kinds of fabric including a shadow silk fabric with twill weave,a colorful scrolling lotus brocade?contained red,green,brown and white?with weft/triple weave and a green jacquard leno fabric with two wrap cross are imitated after repeated attempts.It not only achieved the restoration of the Ming Dynasty apparel fabrics,but also laid a solid foundation for researching and recovering of Ming Dynasty clothing.