Hand-dyed indigo cloth hanging in the Zhoucheng workshop

The Artisans

The hands behind every pattern.

Every Montlune piece begins in a small workshop in Zhoucheng Village, Dali — a town where the Bai people have been tying, folding, and dyeing cloth for over a thousand years. These photographs were taken there, on our visits to the family workshop we partner with.

The grandmother in her Bai headdress, stitching a resist pattern at her worktable

Master artisan

The grandmother at the vat

In Zhoucheng the pattern is decided long before the dye. It is decided here — in the tying. She has spent a lifetime pressing knots into white cotton, each one a mark that will surface from the indigo as a blossom, a ring, a cloud. Every bag in this shop begins on her table.

In this photograph she is teaching, the way the craft has always moved: hand over hand, grandmother to the next pair of hands willing to learn.

We are writing her profile the way it should be written — with her, in her words. Her name will appear here once she has seen and approved it.

The grandmother guiding a young visitor's stitches at the workshop table — Hand over hand: teaching a visitor the knot that becomes the pattern.

Field notes from the workshop

Close-up of the grandmother's hands guiding a visitor's stitching — Where every bag begins: her hands over a learner's, pulling each stitch tight enough that the dye cannot argue with it.

A tied bundle of white cotton held up before dyeing — White cotton, tied and ready. Whatever the knots keep from the dye becomes the pattern.

A young dyer stirring cloth into an indigo vat beneath a hanging dye-house banner — At the vat, under the dye-house banner. Each bundle is dipped, lifted to meet the air, and dipped again.

Gloved hands lowering a tied bundle into the indigo vat — Cloth leaves the vat green. Indigo only turns blue when it meets the air.

Indigo-dyed cloth hanging to dry in the workshop courtyard, seen from below — Dyed lengths hang in the courtyard until the mountain air sets the color.

The grandmother in her Bai headdress leaning over a student's work — Leaning in over a student's shoulder. The pattern language passes the way it always has — one stitch at a time.

More of the workshop's artisans will take their place on this page as we sit down with each of them. Every profile is written with its subject's permission — never invented.