Artistic Features of Hand-knitting Technology of Nanjing Yunjin Wood Machine Makeup

Nanjing Yunjin is an outstanding representative of China's excellent traditional culture. Named for its colorful beauty, such as clouds in the sky. It embodies the essence of China's silk weaving skills and has the reputation of "golden inch", with a history of 1580 years. Nanjing Yunjin, together with Chengdu's Shu brocade, Suzhou's Song brocade and Guangxi's Zhuang brocade, is called "Four Famous Brocades in China", ranking first among the three ancient famous brocade (Yunjin, Song brocade and Shu brocade). In ancient silk fabrics, "brocade" is the fabric representing the highest technical level.

Yunjin's knitting technology is superb, fine and creative.

It is characterized by warping and weft breaking, and digging flowers to make up makeup. The loom used for brocade is called Dahualou Wood Loom. It is 5.6m long,1.4m wide and 4m high, and the design is very scientific and reasonable. Each loom is divided into upstairs and downstairs parts. When weaving, the flower puller upstairs lifts the warp according to the requirements of the flower book, and the weaver downstairs colors the pattern on the fabric and throws the shuttle to weave the weft. The completion of a weft requires the small weft tube to weave alternately for many times, and the color can be changed freely. The process is very complicated. With the cooperation of upper and lower people, only 5-6 cm can be woven in one day. Therefore, the ancients said that "an inch of brocade is an inch of gold." It is said that brocade was used as currency in ancient times, so the word "brocade" changed from "silk" to "gold". The advantages of this weaving method are: a weft is finished by digging flowers many times, the color matching is free, and the same unit pattern can be woven into non-repetitive colors, making the whole product beautiful and harmonious. This unique knitting technology is irreplaceable by modern machines.

Picking flowers and arranging books is another major scientific and technological feature of Yunjin. Because of the complex patterns, it is often necessary to weave 1 inch tapestry with 1 foot long flowers. Figuratively speaking, picking flowers and knotting books is like computer software, which uses cotton bottom line as the pattern color, programs it according to the oldest knotting method, and then knits it on the machine. Pulling flowers upstairs is equivalent to typing on a computer keyboard, and weaving girls downstairs is equivalent to displaying them on a computer screen according to the woven surface, and then painting them with gold. The whole process is wonderful and full of magic, and it is still within the scope of state secrets.

The person sitting on the plane, known as the "flower puller", only needs to lift it in the order of crossing the line, which is equivalent to tapping the computer keyboard. The person sitting under the machine is called a weaver. He used the technique of "warping and breaking weft" (weft yarn is composed of countless colorful velvet segments), dug a flower disc for weaving, and painted it with gold to weave colorful brocade. The woven surface in front of him is equivalent to a computer display screen, which is irreplaceable by the machine.

In addition to the above-mentioned "picking flowers and binding books" and "warp and weft", the weaving technology of Yunjin is also a major feature of Yunjin. The cloth looks elegant and resplendent, which meets the needs of royal supplies. It is precisely because they have been palace supplies for a long time, regardless of the cost in production, that they came from behind and reached the peak of brocade technology. Brocade mainly includes four categories: "weaving gold" (foil made of gold, cut into silk and twisted into thread), "library brocade", "library satin" and "make-up flower", which are used for emperor's robes, queen's phoenix clothes and Xia clothes. Yunjin is sometimes given as a court gift to foreign monarchs and envoys, as well as to ministers and meritorious people. The first three categories can be produced by modern machines, but the "digging" and "changing colors one by one" of cosmetic flowers can only be done by hand. "Makeup flower" is the most complicated variety of Yunjin, and it is also the most representative jacquard silk weaving variety with Nanjing local characteristics. In the knitting method, there is no limit to using colored velvet tubes of various colors to make local disc knitting makeup on fabric patterns. A piece of cloth can be matched with twenty or thirty colors. The varieties are "cosmetic satin", "cosmetic satin", "cosmetic yarn" and "cosmetic brocade", but only one kind of cosmetic satin was inherited after liberation. Fabric weave can be divided into five satin, seven satin and eight satin. There are eight patterns, four patterns, three patterns, two patterns and one pattern.