Article ID: CBB196651656

The Craft of Color and the Chemistry of Dyes: Textile Technology in the Ryukyu Kingdom, 1700–1900 (January 2022)

unapi

This article explores the little-known history of bingata, a textile technology of resist dyeing developed in the Ryukyu Islands (modern-day Okinawa, Japan) during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and later, promoted as traditional folk craft under Japanese colonialism. Located at the center of tributary and trading networks linking Northeast and Southeast Asia and, after 1600, Europe, the Ryukyus were an integral part of the early modern world. Tracing the circulation of Prussian blue from Europe to Asia, this article shows how shared materials and techniques afforded by trade networks linked the craft work of Ryukyu craftsmen to the experimental science of European dyer-chemists. In doing so, this article challenges longstanding binaries that oppose West and non-West, science and craft knowledge, and traditional folk crafts and modern technology. It argues that the reciprocal relationship between materials and techniques underpinned the knowledge-making practices of both Ryukyu dyers and European dyer-chemists.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB196651656/

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Authors & Contributors
Schaffer, Simon
Klein, Ursula
Skeehan, Danielle C.
Riello, Giorgio
Ferguson, Dean T.
Seeberg, Stefanie
Concepts
Crafts and craftspeople
Technology
Material culture
Textiles
Dyes
Inventors and invention
Time Periods
18th century
17th century
19th century
16th century
Early modern
Renaissance
Places
Europe
China
Americas
North America
Italy
France
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