Yinyixuan 隐逸轩

The House

In 1688 three brothers of the Wang family — Hanyuan, Chongyuan, and Shuyuan — came from Sangzikeng in Wuping, Fujian, to Baimachong by the Wanzai bridge (now Shuangqiao township) in Jiangxi and founded Yinyixuan. Baimachong was named for the ramie grown widely there, and the family record describes the brothers' cloth as fine, white, and even, and their ramie paper as smooth to write on; both sold as far as Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

In 1912 Wang Zepu, a descendant of Hanyuan, opened the Yinyixuan grass-cloth shop in the Wang ancestral hall at Wanzai. The county gazetteer records that before 1919 the county town had three grass-cloth buying houses, in the Xin, Wang, and Li family halls, and the one in the Wang hall is Yinyixuan's predecessor. The family's business also reached into lacquerware and painting; in the late Qing and early Republic, Wang Chuntai opened a lacquerware firm in Yichun — among the earliest there — and the lane where it stood became a centre of the city's dry-lacquer trade.

In 1958 the township government brought Yinyixuan into a joint public-private operation, forming the state-run Daqiao Grass Cloth Factory, with Wang Kaiyan, Zepu's only son, as sales manager. In 1964 he returned to the family trade and opened a grass-cloth house under the Yinyixuan name in Yichun. By 1986 Wanzai grass cloth was at times 46.5 per cent of Jiangxi's total grass-cloth exports.

The Daqiao export factory was privatized in 1997 and bought by Wang Huanren, Kaiyan's youngest son, who set up the Wanzai Yinyixuan Grass Cloth Factory. In 2011 Wang Chungen, Huanren's youngest son, and his wife Yang Dan registered Jiangxi Yinyi Industrial Co., Ltd. and took out a trademark for the Yinyixuan name, moving the business from grass cloth into the whole range of ramie products. The house was recognized as a Jiangxi Time-honored Brand in 2019, and in 2024 five state bodies, among them the Ministry of Commerce, named it a China Time-honored Brand.

What They Make

Three crafts are recorded. Ramie grass cloth (xiabu) is woven entirely by hand in three parts — preparing the ramie, twisting the thread, and weaving — running to nearly a hundred steps. Dry-lacquer (tuotai) ware is formed over a shell of cloth and lacquer. Ramie paper is made from ramie fibre. Official materials record the cloth as a national intangible cultural heritage craft and the lacquer and paper work as provincial ones; the working steps are set out on the ramie grass cloth craft page.

Timeline

Passing It On

Wang Chungen, an engineer, is recorded as a municipal-level inheritor of grass-cloth printmaking and leads a ramie weaving studio in Yichun. Yang Dan, from a lacquer family, is a municipal-level inheritor of Yichun lacquerwork and leads a lacquer studio.

Source: official materials published by Jiangxi Yinyi Industrial Co., Ltd. Translated and condensed from the house's own record; no information has been added.

Historical facts on this page come from Official materials published by Jiangxi Yinyi Industrial Co., Ltd. Designation recorded 2024-02-01. This page is editorial content; it is not a product listing and nothing here is an offer for sale.

Independence. Time-Honored Goods is an independent multi-brand store. We are not the official site of Yinyixuan, and we do not speak for the house. See Independence & Sourcing.