# Taiwan Floral Cloth (Huabu)

> Cheap printed cotton covered edge to edge in large, full-blown peonies with lotuses, phoenixes, dragons, mandarin ducks, small florets and auspicious emblems on saturated vermilion, bright pink or sky-blue grounds. Mass-produced from the 1950s–60s, by Far Eastern Textile among others, for quilts, curtains, wrapping cloths and clothing, it was dismissed as gaudy after the 1970s, taken up by designers and artists such as Michael Lin in the 1980s and 1990s, and revived from the 2000s as a Hakka and Taiwanese emblem on interiors, festivals and cultural-creative goods.

- Period: 1950–present
- Where: East Asia
- Origin: Taiwan: printed floral cotton first appeared under Japanese rule (1895–1945) and drew on Japanese textiles; the classic large-peony cloth was mass-produced in the 1950s–60s by mills such as Far Eastern Textile (遠東紡織) and sold through fabric markets such as Yongle Market on Dihua Street, Taipei; taken up by designers and artists in the 1980s and 1990s, and revived by the Hakka community as a Hakka and Taiwanese emblem from the 2000s
- Branch: Traditions & vernacular
- Also known as: Taiwan floral fabric, Taiwan floral chintz, Hakka floral cloth (客家花布), Far Eastern floral cloth (遠東花布), Grandma cloth (阿媽布), Red floral cloth (紅花布), Bedsheet fabric (被單布), Huazi fabric (花仔布)
- Page: https://stylogeny.com/styles/taiwan-floral-chintz/

## Use it with care

The cloth is shared Taiwanese popular culture, but its names and meanings are contested: 'Hakka floral cloth' is the most common label in Taiwan though Minnan, Indigenous and mainlander households all used it, so do not present it as exclusively Hakka, nor as generic 'Chinese' pattern. Northeast China has a red-and-green peony quilt cotton of its own (东北大花), revived in Harbin's 2023–24 tourist boom; describe the Taiwanese cloth by its own Japanese-era roots, Taiwanese mills and markets rather than treating the two as one. Recent prints also borrow motifs from Taiwan's Indigenous peoples, which belong to those communities and should not be reused without their involvement. Many current patterns are the protected designs of mills and designers, and Michael Lin's paintings are authored works, so work in the manner rather than copying a specific print.

## How it works

- Pack large, full-blown peonies, with lotus, leaves and scatters of small florets, edge to edge so that no single bloom becomes the focus and little ground shows through.
- Lay the flowers on a saturated vermilion, bright pink or sky-blue ground, play red blooms against purple-pink ones and set them among green leaves, so that the colours vibrate against one another.
- Render each bloom as lush and nearly real, with layered petals in stepped tones, rather than reducing it to a flat emblem or an abstract shape.
- Weave auspicious motifs (phoenix, dragon, mandarin ducks, the Eight Treasures, copper-coin patterns) into the floral field as wishes for prosperity, not as a story.
- From the late 1990s on, carry the cheap bedding pattern into public space: artists and designers enlarge the repeat, by hand or in print, to cover a floor, a wall, a shop interior or a giant figure, sometimes recolouring it, so that domestic cloth becomes public space.
- Keep words off the pattern: put any text on a plain label, band or panel beside the cloth.

## Its design choices

Defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

### Layout & composition
- [All-over field](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/all-over-field/) (defining)
- [Full bleed](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/full-bleed/) (characteristic)

### Space & hierarchy
- [Horror vacui](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/horror-vacui/) (defining)
- [Repetition & rhythm](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/repetition-and-rhythm/) (defining)
- [Flat hierarchy](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat-hierarchy/) (characteristic)
- [Extreme scale contrast](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/extreme-scale-contrast/) (occasional)

### Typography
- [Brush & pen calligraphy](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/brush-and-pen-calligraphy/) (occasional)

### Colour
- [Full polychrome](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/full-polychrome/) (defining)
- [Complementary clash](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/complementary-clash/) (characteristic)
- [Flat fields](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat-fields/) (characteristic)
- [Pastel](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/pastel/) (occasional)

### Form & shape
- [Biomorphic curves](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/biomorphic-curves/) (defining)
- [Naturalistic depiction](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/naturalistic-depiction/) (characteristic)
- [Stylised figuration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/stylised-figuration/) (occasional)

### Surface & texture
- [Flat](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat/) (characteristic)

### Ornament
- [Floral & vegetal](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/floral-and-vegetal/) (defining)
- [Abundant decoration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/abundant-decoration/) (defining)
- [Folk & sacred symbols](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/folk-and-sacred-symbols/) (characteristic)
- [Geometric tessellation](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/geometric-tessellation/) (occasional)

### Imagery
- [Pattern & repeat](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/pattern-and-repeat/) (defining)
- [Found & vernacular imagery](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/found-and-vernacular-imagery/) (occasional)
- [Painterly illustration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/painterly-illustration/) (occasional)
- [Line illustration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/line-illustration/) (occasional)

### Medium & production
- [Textile & craft](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/textile-and-craft/) (defining)
- [Architecture & signage](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/architecture-and-signage/) (characteristic)
- [Hand-painted](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/hand-painted/) (occasional)

### Tone & intent
- [Nostalgic & retro](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/nostalgic-and-retro/) (defining)
- [Communal & popular](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/communal-and-popular/) (characteristic)
- [Warm & approachable](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/warm-and-approachable/) (characteristic)
- [Playful & witty](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/playful-and-witty/) (occasional)
- [Ironic & self-aware](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/ironic-and-self-aware/) (occasional)

Avoids: Generous white space, Single focal point, Ornament-free, Monochrome, Limited spot colours, Non-representational, Typography only, Straight photography, Rational & objective

Palette: #d42a20, #e8468c, #7bbfe6, #2d8a46, #f7f2e8, #8e1b3a

Typefaces: None on the cloth itself; when words accompany it, kaishu (regular brush script) for auspicious words and titles on a plain panel beside the pattern, Traditional Chinese Songti / Mingti (Ming-style) text type for labels, tags and book covers set against the cloth

Known for: Far Eastern Textile (遠東紡織) and other mills, early 1960s: large bunches of unfurling peonies on bright pink, red or sky-blue grounds, drawn from Japanese textiles; the cloth is called 'Far Eastern floral cloth' after its best-known maker (Taipei Times, 2010); Michael Lin (林明弘), floor painting with phoenix and peony motifs in the entrance hall of the Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2000), one of the large-scale installations in which he 'uses the prints' (Taipei Times, 2010); his floral patterns come from Taiwanese textiles, first from embroidered muslin pillowcases that recalled dowry bedding ('Interior', 1996), and mostly from popular bedding prints of the 1960s to the 1980s given as dowry (M+ interview, 2023); Michael Lin, the pink and lavender floral floor painted on made-to-measure wood panels for the bar of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2002); earlier, in 'Untitled (Cigarette Break)' (IT Park Gallery, Taipei, 1999; M+ collection), he partially upholstered a pair of Le Corbusier LC-2 chairs in the same patterns as the flower-print paintings shown with them; Hakka Expo 2023, Taoyuan (Hakka Affairs Council and Taoyuan City Government): a 16-metre inflatable Hello Kitty dressed in Hakka floral cloth, floating on Longtan Large Tourist Pond (Taiwan News, 18 August 2023); MeiGa (美角), a brand of modern accessories in traditional Hakka printed cloth that its founder Meiga Lu (盧瑞春) developed with the Hakka Affairs Council in 2005; the cloth was promoted widely at the spring 2006 Tung Festival (油桐花季) (Shih Hsin University press, 2015); Wu Ching-kuei (Ellen Wu, 吳清桂), 台灣花布 (Taiwan Floral Cloth, Locus Publishing), illustrated with decades-old swatches she collected and photographed; the Taipei Times (2010) counts it, with her earlier Taiwanese Design Treasure Trove, among the first books on the cloth; Chen Tsung-ping (陳宗萍), 花樣時代：台灣花布美學新視界 (listed in English as 'Taiwan Chintz Patterns', Yuan-Liou, 2012), 392 pages classifying 708 floral-cloth patterns, from peonies, mandarin ducks and small all-over florets to abstracted designs, garden scenes and cartoon animals (NTCRI Craft quarterly review)

## Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

- Alike in its design choices: [Batik Pattern Tradition](https://stylogeny.com/styles/batik.md) (1600–present), 63% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [African Wax & Fancy Print](https://stylogeny.com/styles/wax-print.md) (1880–present), 59% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Pakistani Truck Art](https://stylogeny.com/styles/pakistani-truck-art.md) (1947–present), 56% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Bezalel School](https://stylogeny.com/styles/bezalel-school.md) (1906–1929), 53% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Persian Miniature (Ilkhanid, Timurid and Safavid Book Painting)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/persian-miniature.md) (c. 1300–1700), 49% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Superflat](https://stylogeny.com/styles/superflat.md) (1993–present), 48% alike

## Sources

- Wikipedia: Taiwan floral fabric (first appeared under Japanese rule; mass-produced in the 1950s–60s; vermilion or light-blue grounds with peonies, dragons, fenghuang, lotuses and Eight Treasures; tablecloths, curtains, bags, wrapping cloths, quilts and clothing; seen as cheap and gaudy after the 1970s; taken up by designers and artists in the 1980s and 1990s; Hakka revival in the 2000s–2010s; the contested 'Hakka floral fabric' name; Hakka copper-coin patterns in the captions; books by Chen Tsung-ping and Wu Ching-kuei): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_floral_fabric
- Catherine Shu, 'Weaving Taiwanese history', Taipei Times, 25 August 2010 (Ellen Wu's books; Far Eastern Textile and other companies drawing on Japanese textiles in the early 1960s; unfurling peonies on bright pink, red or sky-blue grounds; quilts, curtains and gifts in the 1960s and 1970s; names red floral cloth, grandma cloth, Hakka cloth, and Far Eastern floral cloth after its best-known maker; Yongle Market; Michael Lin 'uses the prints in large-scale installations'): https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2010/08/25/2003481237
- Yuko Kikuchi, 'Transnational Vernacularity of Taiwan Floral Chintz: craft-design and cultural industry in Taiwan', Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference 'Beyond the Cultural Industry', National University of Singapore, 4 July 2013 (craft-design products in commercial interiors, shops, museums and airports; first noticed in international art scenes; cultural creative industry; exhibitions, books and pattern catalogues since 2000): https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/11791/
- Wikipedia: Michael Lin (artist) ('Interior', 1996, copied from embroidered muslin pillowcases recalling dowry bedding; 'Untitled–Cigarette Break', 1999, with LC-2 chairs 'partially upholstered' in the same patterns; Taipei Biennial 2000 floor with phoenix and peony motifs; Palais de Tokyo café lounge, 2002): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lin_(artist)
- M+ Museum, 'Painting Possibilities: Michael Lin's Relational Art', 9 February 2023 (on 'Untitled (Cigarette Break)', 1999; Lin: most of his fabrics 'come from very popular prints' of the 1960s to the 1980s in Taiwan, used for the wedding-night bed and 'given by the wife's family as part of the dowry'): https://mplus.org.hk/en/magazine/interview-with-conceptual-artist-and-painter-michael-lin
- Vivian Rehberg, 'Language of Flowers', on Atelier Michael Lin (patterns appropriated from Taiwanese textile designs, applied to made-to-measure wood panels on wall or floor; the pink and lavender floral plane as the bar floor at the Palais de Tokyo; floral slip-covers on two Corbusier chairs): https://www.ateliermichaellin.com/articles/vivian-rehberg--language-of-flowers
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, press release for Michael Lin's 'Pentachrome' (2022): his practice takes patterns and designs from traditional Taiwanese textiles: https://www.metmuseum.org/press-releases/pentachrome-2022-exhibitions
- Taiwan News, 'Taiwan's Hakka Expo 2023 breaks stereotypes', 18 August 2023 (a 16-metre Hello Kitty adorned in Hakka traditional floral fabric on Longtan Large Tourist Pond; organised by the Hakka Affairs Council and Taoyuan City Government): https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4974823
- Bernice Shen (沈容安), 'The Renovation of Hakka Printed Cloth', Shih Hsin University press, 6 March 2015 (MeiGa turns traditional Hakka printed cloth into modern accessories; brand developed with the Hakka Affairs Council in 2005; the cloth promoted at the 2006 Tung Festival): https://shuj.shu.edu.tw/blog/2015/03/06/the-renovation-of-hakka-printed-cloth-2131%e6%9c%9f/
- National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute (NTCRI), Craft quarterly, book review of 陳宗萍, 花樣時代：臺灣花布美學新視界 / Taiwan Chintz Patterns (遠流, 392 pp.): peonies, mandarin ducks (鴛鴦) and small all-over florets (小碎花); 708 patterns classified; red and purple flowers predominate; abstracted, garden-scene and cartoon-animal variants: https://themefile.culture.tw/ntcri/quarterly/files/126eLYr_f.pdf
- Open Library records: Wu Qinggui, Taiwan hua bu (ISBN 9789862131718), https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15592452W; Chen Zongping, Hua yang shi dai (ISBN 9789573270645, 2012), https://openlibrary.org/works/OL23187956W
- CGTN, 'Country-style fashion adored by visitors to Harbin', 12 January 2024 (traditional red-and-green peony patterns with cultural significance in northeast China's folk customs, traditionally made into quilts for newlyweds, now a trend in Harbin): https://chinaservicesinfo.com/s/202401/12/WS65a8f26b498ed2d7b7ea4da2/country-style-fashion-adored-by-visitors-to-harbin.html
- That's Mandarin, 'From Douyin to Your Screen: Dongbei Floral Pattern', 15 December 2023 (the 东北大花 floral-pattern trend and the hashtag #让东北大花征服世界, November 2023): https://www.thatsmandarin.com/chinese-culture/dongbei-floral-pattern/

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From Stylogeny (https://stylogeny.com/), an atlas of graphic-design styles by Van Riel Online Services. How it is made: https://stylogeny.com/about/. Cite as: Stylogeny, “Taiwan Floral Cloth (Huabu)”, https://stylogeny.com/styles/taiwan-floral-chintz/