Taiwan Today

A brightly colored floral pattern is finding renewed popularity among designers, artists and the public.

At the beginning of 2005, the government's Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) found itself in the somewhat peculiar position of promoting a certain shade of red as 's representative color. With a peachy pink undertone, the particular hue can often be seen in during festive, celebratory occasions when it is used to add color to clothing, table settings and decorations. As the CCA swung into action to promote the color, fashion and interior designer Ellen Wu was invited to help organize a press conference for what the council dubbed " red." In Wu's choice of textiles for the press conference, the brilliant color provided the background for a pattern of full peony blossoms.

Wu's design work has been warmly received at home and in overseas Taiwanese communities, as well as at cultural festivals in , and the . red and floral patterns similar to those often seen on old quilts have figured prominently in Wu's recent designs of items such as dresses, bags, hats, tablecloths, curtains and cushions. In May this year, Solutions Publishing in published a reference book Wu penned that contains 150 floral patterns found in traditional Taiwanese textiles.

Cloth with peony flower patterns has long been a symbol of wealth and nobility in Asian cultures. Wu notes that while peony flowers are esteemed in , mainland and , the designs typically produced by the two latter cultures are more sedate than the relatively unrestrained Taiwanese variety.

In , the original cotton textile product with the patterns of peonies and other flowers was first made in the 1960s by Far Eastern Textile Ltd., giving rise to a common name for the fabric, "Far Eastern floral cloth." Japanese influences can also be seen in Far Eastern's fabric because of the company's business connections with 's textile industry and designers.

Production advances at Far Eastern enabled the company to mass-produce fabric with a variety of floral motifs, rich colors and complex contours. Thanks to Far Eastern, the cloth became very popular in the 1960s and 1970s around , finding frequent use in household items such as quilt and pillow covers, as well as in clothing such as dresses and sleeve protectors.

Today, textiles with this traditional floral design against a background of red and other colors are still seen in everyday items, especially in predominantly Hakka communities. The Hakka are 's second largest ethnic group, and the popularity of the cloth in their communities has given rise to another name--"Hakka floral cloth."

However, while Far Eastern was responsible for the first mass-produced version of the cloth, there is no copyright for the combination of the floral pattern and the distinctive red color, and no single designer has ventured to claim credit for it. The cloth has simply become a part of life in , as reflected in yet another name frequently used for it--"grandma's floral cloth." Wu believes the multiplicity of names for the cloth is a reflection of its wider cultural impact. "Be it called Hakka, Far Eastern or grandma's, it formed an integral part of our common life in the past," Wu says. "Now it's being passed on with a new spirit." In fact, Wu does not refer to the fabric by any of these names, preferring to call it simply " floral cloth."

Wu attributes the preference for such brightly colored fabric in 's agricultural, conservative society a half century ago to a longing for a more open, lively lifestyle. She notes the floral cloth was often a part of gifts or accessories for wedding ceremonies and other happy events.

Despite her work promoting red, Wu says she would like to see the floral pattern, rather than the color itself, become a cultural symbol of . "The flowery cloth is more interesting," she says, "because it has a story connected to our collective memory of the past and the emotions it inspires."

Cultural Consciousness

Fashion designer Jasper Huang says he believes the wide circulation of floral cloth during the 1960s and 1970s helped it become a part of 's shared culture. Huang took first place in a dress designing contest held by Elle magazine in in 2001. The following year he was selected by Italian fashion label Salvatore Ferragamo as one of the world's top young designers.

In 2002, Huang went to to study ballet, performance and visual arts. He took with him a piece of floral cloth that, in fact, really had once belonged to his grandmother. "It has a pattern quite familiar to me and I liked its beautiful look without really understanding why," says Huang, who grew up in a rural area of in southern . In , after mixing with artists and designers--many of whom repeatedly asked him about distinctive aspects of Taiwanese culture--Huang started a personal quest to define a Taiwanese identity. "I went to the due to my admiration of its culture," Huang says. "Then I came to realize I wouldn't win respect until I became confident of my own cultural traditions."

The unique local style expressed by floral cloth is one of the tools Huang has employed in his quest to rediscover those traditions, as he has tried in recent years to mix elements of the fabric into his design work. On the one hand, he believes that the fondness for striking patterns and basic, bright colors reflects a somewhat unsophisticated aesthetic from 's past. On the other hand, he says the floral cloth also serves as a totem because it is capable of evoking memories and cultural identification. In one of his works, for example, he transforms a traditional Taiwanese quilt cover into a modern evening dress. "From an international point of view, the floral cloth's modern reinterpretation might serve to deliver a significant message of what Taiwanese design is like," he says.

Like Ellen Wu in her determination to promote Taiwanese culture, Huang also expresses a passion for his homeland's heritage. He has used this passion to define what he calls "New Taiwanese Style," targeting it as a future fashion trend. He has also been invited to contribute to events with a strong local flavor such as 2007's tai ke rock concerts, in which musicians proclaimed their Taiwanese spirit. Tai ke is directly translated from Mandarin into English as " guest," but in popular usage, the term has come to mean a person who embraces local culture. Before the beginning of the concert series, Huang held a fashion show in which some of the performers wore clothing made of floral cloth.

This year, Huang extended his influence beyond pop culture, contributing his design skills to the annual religious pilgrimage that transports a statue of the goddess Matsu--one of the most venerated divinities in --around the island. At a fashion show held before the pilgrimage began, models displayed his designs, some of which featured the iconic floral cloth.

Despite the emerging recognition of local cultural values, Huang points out that the wild, bright appearance of the floral cloth has not yet really penetrated 's mainstream design sector. "More often than not, when exchanging views on the subject, I get more response from foreign designers than from other Taiwanese," he says. "A strong confidence in local Taiwanese culture is required in this line of work."

In the international art and design sectors, Michael Lin has also explored the visual potential of floral patterns inspired by traditional Taiwanese textiles. The great-grandson of Lin Sian-tang (1881-1956), one of the leaders of Taiwanese sociopolitical resistance to Japanese colonial occupation (1895-1945), Michael Lin was born in but now roams the world, dividing his time chiefly between and . Like Jasper Huang, Lin's work has helped enliven the Taiwanese pop music scene. For example, he hung huge pieces of floral cloth on the concert stage for a performance by pop singer Chen Sheng, a leading tai ke figure who sings in Holo and Hakka--two major languages found in --as well as in Mandarin. In a 2006 reopening ceremony for the Louis Vuitton flagship store in , Lin projected large images of the floral cloth pattern on the facade of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, a solemn landmark building and major tourist attraction in downtown .

Joyful Festivity

Art critic Chin Ya-chun points out that Lin usually presents objects and patterns that exist in everyday life, allowing spectators to interpret them based on their own cultural backgrounds. "Those brightly colored, repeated floral patterns bring with them an aura of joyful festivity," she says. "Instead of being hung on an art museum's wall for people to just look at, they help form intimate spaces that invite people to join in, intervene and feel." In several of Lin's installation art pieces at home and abroad, large-scale floral motifs can be seen rambling all over floors or walls of exhibition venues, which have included museums, churches and city halls.

Positioning his vocation as somewhere between that of an artist and a designer, Lin is also interested in home furniture because of its mix of functional and aesthetic dimensions. In a series of living-room furniture pieces entitled "Spring 2003" that Lin created for the Italian brand Moroso for an exhibition in Milan, Italy, the sofa, chair and table were covered with the floral patterns. Use of the traditional fabric in this way has now become one of the signature elements of his work.

Lin's devotion to aspects of traditional Taiwanese culture has, perhaps inevitably, drawn political interpretations of his work. Art critic Lin Hong-john, for example, believes that Michael Lin's manipulation of such homegrown symbols carries political significance and forms something close to a manifesto. For Lin Hong-john, Michael Lin's floral patterns are a comment on the political reality of postcolonial , "a nation without nationhood," as the critic puts it.

Commenting on Michael Lin's installation work of a large bed featuring pillows made of floral fabric at a 2001 show at the of in , curator Hou Han-ru addresses a challenging aspect of Michael Lin's art--'s "national obsession" with identity. Now the director of Exhibitions and Public Programs at the San Francisco Art Institute, Hou believes that Lin's work reflects 's status as "an in-between island with its typical hybrid culture, floating on the sea of tension, negotiating its survival and aspirations between political uncertainty and economic and cultural development."

Hou says that by lying in Michael Lin's bed, with its "made in " textile motifs, one might come to a better understanding of the changing construct of the island's identity. For the distinguished art curator who was born in mainland , Lin's borrowing from folk craft traditions represents an oblique, non-partisan assertion of identity, one that dissolves the question of cultural heritage into "the current of the everyday."

These issues of culture and identity are themes shared by designers Jasper Huang and Ellen Wu and are apparent in their use of floral cloth. As Huang puts it, the re-emerging fascination with those brilliant peony blooms and a peachy shade of red represents more than a passing fad, but rather a revaluation and resurgence of basic elements of Taiwanese culture.

Write to Pat Gao at kotsijin@gmail.com