Representative works of Shanxi embroidery

Shanxi Embroidery's representative works include: The Story of the Western Chamber, The Thousand-Year-Old Cypress, The Merchants of Jin, and The Ritual of Buddha.

Embroidery, also known as "needle embroidery", commonly known as "embroidery", is widely popular in the three Jin land. "Houma embroidery" is a kind of "Jin embroidery", which has a history of 3,000 years.

Embroidery patterns:

Many of them are based on popular themes. First, it is based on folk stories passed down from generation to generation, such as "Cowherd and Weaving Maiden", "The Match of Heavenly Fairies", "The Legend of the White Snake", etc., which expresses the cleverness and wisdom of the laboring people, their unwillingness to succumb to the evil and their pursuit of a better life. The pursuit of a better life; secondly, it is based on local customs, such as "wedding, funeral, marriage, marriage" and other traditional folk customs, full of strong local feelings; thirdly, it is based on natural flowers, grass, birds and animals, permeated with the "unity of man and nature" of traditional Chinese culture and the idea of harmony. The third is the flowers, grass, birds and animals in nature, which permeates the traditional Chinese culture of "unity of heaven and man".

The use of color in embroidery:

Strong contrasting techniques are used, and colors such as red and green, blue and black, and yellow and white are used as the main colors, and natural pigments are used for dyeing. The embroidery colors are true, real, fresh and alive, and do not fade. Its stitching is tight, sturdy and wear-resistant, and the embroidery is flush and smooth. It is connected with people's clothing, food, housing and transportation, and also integrated with cultural phenomena such as yearly customs, life etiquette, literature, painting and religion, preserving the original style and incorporating fashion elements.

Leader of the Houma embroidery army - Guo Meiling.

"There are talented people in the river and mountains, each leading the way for hundreds of years". More than a thousand years Houma embroidery fire, unceasing, emerged a number of outstanding heirs.

Growing up in the "embroidery family" Guo Meiling, since childhood by the art of embroidery, her great-grandmother was known as "skillful hands", had been in the Qing Dynasty court as an embroiderer. Her grandmother was also a local "skillful daughter-in-law" and was once chosen to embroider the wedding dress of a young lady of the county master's family. It is now the fifth generation to pass on the art to Guo Meiling.

She mastered the art of embroidery when she was seven or eight years old. Over the decades, Guo Meiling adhering to the family tradition, specializing in women's red, the long of a hundred skilled women, learn Jinnan and around the folk embroidery techniques, finishing research, innovation in folk embroidery crafts, she summarized in practice, "A embroidery, the door ring embroidery, jumping three stitches," and other embroidery is known as Jin embroidery in the masterpieces.

In order to pass on the embroidery culture, Guo Meiling opened the Jin Embroidery Cooperative, which has more than 30 embroiderers.