Origin and Characteristics of Miao Embroidery

Miao embroidery is different from Hunan embroidery, Shu embroidery and Suzhou embroidery, it has strong Miao cultural characteristics, with unique and exaggerated modeling, it is very popular among the Miao people, who will prepare Miao embroidery before getting married.

So, what is the origin and characteristics of Miao embroidery? Together with me to see it!

A, Miao embroidery origin

Miao embroidery art, is one of the unique forms of expression of the Miao history and culture, is the crystallization of the Miao women's hard work and wisdom. Legend has it that a female chief named Lanjuan, in order to remember the migratory trekking experience, came up with a way to remember things with colorful threads, embroidered a yellow thread across the Yellow River, embroidered a blue thread across the Yangtze River, and embroidered a symbol to mark the crossing of mountains and ridges, and when she finally arrived at the settlement where she could land, she had embroidered all the threads from the collar of her coat to the leg of her pants. From now on, the Miao girls get married to wear a hand-embroidered dress, in order to remember the departed homeland, commemorate the heroic and intelligent predecessors, but also in order to inherit the predecessors handed down this beautiful, not forgetting the ancestors, to inspire the future generations.

Second, the modern significance of Miao embroidery modeling

Miao embroidery is a traditional Chinese folk culture, because of the special geographic environment of the Miao region, making it difficult to reach the traditional Chinese literati culture, the special folk culture of the Miao people has been supporting the development of this ancient nation, the formation of the Miao region's unique folklore and personality and spirit.

1. Practicality

The art of Miao embroidery is closely related to real life, and its content is close to the daily production life, with a simple and honest style. The proximity to life also enables Miao embroidery to retain the characteristics of art when it occurs, i.e., the integration of art and production activities or life scenarios during the period of primitive art. In this kind of artistic activity, material and spiritual production are intertwined, creating products with both practical value and aesthetic function, which is also worthy of reference in our future design life, and the refinement of life is precisely the task of beauty that we as designers have been entrusted with. Refine the beauty of life, closely integrated with the production, in line with the practical premise, bring people visual enjoyment.

2, artistic

Miao embroidery modeling simple and elegant, and sometimes even penetrate a kind of naive and romantic feelings, it seeks to transcend the reality of the symbolic intention of the composition of the approach, both the traditional artistic style, but also multilateral and flexible expression; both primitive and rustic, but also modern and avant-garde, showing a kind of modern art can only see the composition of the intention of the performance and the intention of isomorphic space. It shows a kind of intentional compositional expression and isomorphic space that can only be seen in modern art. In terms of artistic modeling, they do not care about structure, do not talk about perspective, and even disregard the proportion and reality; they do not seek resemblance, and even do not talk about logic, and they completely rely on the good wishes and fantasies of the Miao people to give free play to their bold creativity. They all pursue the free combination of images, so that the volume of natural objects is completely eliminated, leaving only the composition of colorful lines and surfaces, which are organically stacked in space, forming a unique artistic shape, and the picture presents an uninterrupted process of movement.

3, borrowing and imitation

On the borrowing and imitation of materials, Miao embroidery art takes a wide range of materials, from living animals and plants to inanimate river pebbles, pig hoof prints, and even earth ditches, etc., are the objects of expression of the needle and thread in the hands of the Miao people. As a whole, the national consciousness of animal worship is strong, depicting animal patterns in the Miao clothing accounted for the vast majority, especially the dragon enjoys a high status in the minds of the Miao people, they gave the image of the dragon in the wish for goodness and aesthetic feelings, Miao embroidery in the shape of the dragon in a thousand forms, some dragons have many feet; some dragons are composed of links, fat and round, no claws, no scales, and there are dragons, dragons, and people, but also have wings, and the dragon is a man with a body. People, birds and dragons mixed into one.

The study of Miao embroidery art is a process of absorption, digestion and refinement, in the initial contact with the Miao embroidery art, in-depth analysis, thorough research, which is a long process, but this is not our ultimate goal, we need to create again, to create a traditional Miao cultural flavor and meet the requirements of our work at the moment works of art. We can only study and learn the art of Hmong embroidery seriously rather than perfunctorily, y rather than superficially, in order to turn the part that serves the modern art into a kind of fresh blood, and inject it into the creation of modern art.