Suzhou embroidery in Suzhou embroidery

Suzhou embroidery refers to "Suzhou embroidery" in a narrow sense, while Suzhou embroidery in a broad sense is a famous handicraft with Suzhou as its distribution center and spread all over Jiangsu, which occupies an important position in the history of arts and crafts development in China, and is also called "the four famous embroideries" in China with Guangdong embroidery, Hunan embroidery and Shu embroidery.

Pieces of silk fabrics woven from silkworms 5,000 years ago unearthed in Qianshan ancient site in Xing Wu prove that China is the earliest country in the world to raise silkworms and collect silkworms, which originated in Taihu Lake basin and laid the foundation for the development of Suzhou embroidery. Due to the limitation of literature and objects, it is still difficult to explain exactly when Suzhou embroidery began. However, according to Liu Xiang's Shuo Yuan, as early as the Spring and Autumn Period more than 2,500 years ago, there were already "people who embroidered clothes to protect their fur" in the State of Wu. During the Three Kingdoms period, the younger sister of Zhao Da, the prime minister of Soochow, was able to embroider the map of the First Zhang Shan Terrain Army in China with embroidery, which was called "one-shot" at that time. The biography of the Three Kingdoms, Wu Zhi and Jiang Qin also recorded the sentence "The clothes of wives and concubines are all splendid", which shows that Suzhou embroidery reached a considerable level in quantity and quality more than 1,700 years ago.

In the Song Dynasty, Suzhou embroidery became ornamental and reached a certain level. Zhang said in the book "The Secret Collection of Qing Dynasty": "Song people embroidered with fine needle and thread, only one or two threads, and the needles were as thin as hair, with exquisite colors and brilliant eyes. The mountains and rivers are far interesting, the pavilions are far-reaching, the figures are vivid, and the flowers and birds are extremely graceful. It's better than painting. " It depicts that Suzhou embroidery in Song Dynasty has the characteristics of fine workmanship and vivid image.

Suzhou embroidery in Yuan Dynasty is not recorded in many documents. "The Secret Collection of Qing People" said: "The thread used by Yuan people is a little thick, but the needle is not dense. I occasionally use ink to thrush, and the Song people are no longer exquisite!" It can be seen that the embroidery in Yuan Dynasty did not make much progress compared with that in Song Dynasty.

Ming Dynasty is an extremely important historical stage in the development of Suzhou embroidery. On the one hand, the increasing demand for embroidery in society has promoted the increase in the number of commercial embroidery. On the other hand, during the Jiajing period (1522- 1566), the appearance of "Luxiangyuan ancient embroidery" in Shanghai played a decisive role in the formation of Suzhou embroidery style. Han Ximeng, the representative of Gu embroidery, is the granddaughter of Gu, the owner of Lvxiang Garden. Her artistic feature is based on painting, and she tries her best to exert the expressive ability of embroidery stitch and color harmony, so that the embroidery effect is incisive and brings out the best in each other. Su embroidery absorbed her strengths, and was completely different from Lu embroidery, Northeast embroidery and Beijing embroidery at that time in raw materials, stitches and embroidery, forming a unique style, with exquisite patterns, elegant colors, lively and changeable stitches and fine embroidery, which was very famous in Qing Dynasty. Suzhou embroidery has become a widely distributed family handicraft industry in Suzhou, engaged in crown, robe, sewing and sewing. In order to market embroidery products, various embroidery villages came into being, and even professional workshops and alleys related to embroidery appeared, such as "embroidery line lane" and "embroidery lane". Suzhou is called "embroidery market". At that time, Shuang Mianxiu began to appear, which showed that Suzhou embroidery had high artistic skills. At that time, the daily embroidery or artistic embroidery of the royal family was mostly made by Suzhou embroidery artists. A large number of Suzhou embroidery artists, such as Cai Qunxiu, Shen Li, Zhu Xinbai, Qian Hui, Lin Shu, Zhao, Shen Guanguan, Yang He, Jin, Jiang, Pan Zhiyu, Zhang and Guo Tongxian, emerged among the people and became famous embroidery workers at that time. Among them, Shen Shou, a Suzhou embroidery artist in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, is the most outstanding. She absorbed the principle of light and shade in western paintings, attached great importance to the realism of objects, and initiated "simulated embroidery", which played a positive role in the improvement, development, popularization and dissemination of Suzhou embroidery techniques and was of epoch-making significance in the history of Chinese embroidery. During the Republic of China, due to social unrest, Japanese invaders invaded China, and all walks of life were depressed, the production of Suzhou embroidery showed a deteriorating trend. Many small and medium-sized embroidery factories have closed down one after another, and artists and embroidery workers have jumped ship. On the eve of liberation, the number of embroidery factories dropped from more than 150 in its heyday to more than 20, and there were few professional workers engaged in embroidery production.

After the founding of New China, under the guidance of the Party's arts and crafts policy of "protection, development and improvement", local governments promoted the sales of embroidery products and increased the production enthusiasm of embroidery workers by organizing material exchanges between urban and rural areas. Towns and towns such as Zhenhu, Library, Guangfu, Tongan, Dongzhu, Mudu and Xukou in Wuxian County have almost formed the scale of "every family has an embroidered mother". According to the statistics of 1990, there are120,000 embroidered mothers in Wuxian county, more than any dynasty in history. Suzhou embroidery has entered a new period of all-round development and improvement. From 65438 to 0958, Suzhou began to popularize machine embroidery. In the late 1980s, computer embroidery was partly adopted, which greatly improved the production capacity of daily embroidery. Suzhou has dozens of tourist spots and hundreds of dealerships, and embroidery is more than anything else. In the embroidery industry, the division of labor is becoming more and more detailed, including Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute, Suzhou Embroidery Factory, Suzhou Embroidery Children's Wear Factory, Suzhou Children's Products Factory, Suzhou Drama Equipment Factory, Suzhou Craft Shoes Factory and Suzhou Flower Line Factory.

During the 1970s and 1990s, this army of Su embroidery not only produced a large number of daily-use embroidery products to meet the market demand every year, but also made a lot of explorations and efforts in broadening new categories, adopting new materials and applying new technologies, and comprehensively used various technical means such as embroidery, inlaying, printing, pasting, carving and painting to produce batches of products with modern aesthetic feeling, which made Su embroidery daily-use products develop rapidly.

At the same time, Suzhou embroidery works attract more attention in the embroidery field with its charming posture. In addition to the most common themes such as "kitten" and "goldfish", the works of flowers and birds, animals, landscapes, figures, still life and other themes are more colorful, and their artistic scope is far greater than before. Technically, the combination of Su embroidery and hair embroidery, hair embroidery and hair carving, embroidery and silk reeling, embroidery and silk reeling has also emerged one after another, which has created a new road for the derivation and development of Su embroidery art and greatly expanded its expressive ability and embroidery effect. It is worth mentioning that in 1966, Suzhou embroidery artists created double-sided embroidery with different colors. The patterns and stitches on both sides of the embroidery surface are the same, but the colors are different. 1980, Su embroidery artists Qiu Xiuying and Yin Lianjun initiated and succeeded in a Shuang Mianxiu with different colors and different stitches (double-sided and three-different embroidery). The first work, The Picture of Cats and Dogs, miraculously shows different pictures of cats and dogs on both sides, breaking through the forbidden area where two kinds of pictures must be consistent in Shuang Mianxiu, and its skills have reached the level of ingenuity. Since then, there have been three kinds of double-sided and different embroidery works, such as Golden Monkey and Pug, Charles and Diana. What's even more incredible is that Gu Jiaqiao, a bearded Suzhou at the age of 5 1 year, began to study Suzhou embroidery skills from 1999, and successively created the world's largest double-sided three-variant embroidery based on two human photography works by Fritz Mansnietzsche of Germany and Neil Barr of the United States, with a height of 56 cm and a width of 40 cm, and at the same time created a precedent for human photography embroidery and embroidery. Then, he created unique works such as Moonlight Lotus Pond and Swan Dance, which used the same thread to show different stitches on both sides of embroidery, creating a precedent for the integration of traditional embroidery and modern science. In May, 2005, after painstaking research, he created the epoch-making double-sided five-variant embroidery White Cat and Panda, with different threads, different scenes, different colors and different stitches, and the hidden embroidery Oriental Pearl, which can fully display the details of embroidery through lighting, achieving a historic breakthrough. 20 1 1 Suzhou embroidery technique "twisted thread embroidery" and three-dimensional embroidery method used to express beadwork have both won national patents, which have injected new vitality into the innovation and development of Suzhou embroidery.

With the expansion of China's foreign cultural exchanges, Suzhou embroidery has become a link between people of all countries. Starting from 1956, Suzhou embroidery artists Gu, Zhou Xunxian and Qian Shuyu went to Britain, Switzerland, Germany, the former Soviet Union and other countries to perform embroidery art live. Every year, more than/kloc-0.0 million guests from five continents come to Suzhou to visit the operation of embroidery artists and watch their works, including former German Chancellor Kohl and Singaporean Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Suzhou embroidery is known as "still life with life" and "Pearl of Oriental Art". At the same time, he made nearly 100 state ceremonies for foreign heads of state, Queen Elizabeth II, President Kim Il Sung of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, President Pompidou of France, Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia and Prime Minister Nakasone of Japan. We are all very happy to get exquisite Suzhou embroidery works of art. For example, the picture of Changchun in Song He embroidered by Su Xiu's mother Xue Jindi in 200 1 was handed over from the performance center of Shanghai Jiaotong University to Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea. The works of Suzhou Embroidery Institute have been exhibited in 100 countries. Suzhou Embroidery Factory has formulated the Quality Standard of Suzhou Embroidery to maintain the inheritance of Suzhou Embroidery.

In recognition of the important contributions made by skilled craftsmen in the field of arts and crafts, the State Council has successively awarded four national "outstanding contribution experts" to Suzhou embroidery workers, namely Xu, Gu, Zhou Aizhen and Zhou Xunxian, from 199 1, enjoying the special government allowance approved by the State Council. Eight people, including Xu, Li Eying, Gu, Ren Jixian, Zhou Yunxian, Yin Lianjun, Zhou Aizhen and others, were awarded the title of "Master of Arts and Crafts in China", which is the highest honorary title in the arts and crafts circles in China.

After the reform and opening up, the collective components of embroidery industry began to transition to privatization. Private enterprises and folk embroidery villages have been established from time to time and are in the ascendant. China arts and crafts masters Gu, Ren Jixian and Jiang Ye opened a studio named after them. In the suburbs of Suzhou, thousands of embroidered mothers are still active. The processing capacity of kimono and hanbok of Suzhou embroidery private enterprises in Dongzhu Town has occupied larger markets in Japan and South Korea respectively, becoming the largest processing and export base of kimono and hanbok in China. The total population of Zhenhu Town is 1.9 million, and the employees engaged in embroidery, mounting embroidery and embroidery frame making are1.1.0 million. There are more than 280 embroideries in one street, and a group of people who can embroider high-end products, such as Xue Jindi, Yao Huifen, Yao, Lu and Zou, have also appeared. Among them, Xue Jindi's characteristic is to specialize in the theme of ancient famous paintings, each of which is exquisite and has won the affirmation of many famous artists. In 2003, the sales revenue of Zhenhu embroidery reached 200 million yuan, and embroidery became a local pillar industry. In 2000, Zhenhu was awarded "China Folk (Embroidery) Art Town" by the Ministry of Culture. Suzhou embroidery is fondle admiringly because of its varieties, shapes, patterns, painting methods, stitches, embroidery, colors, techniques and mounting, and the use of stitches is the language that constitutes various artistic images of embroidery. Xuee Embroidery Manual, which was dictated by Shen Shou and recorded by Zhang Jian, collected his life's experience in embroidery techniques and summarized 18 kinds of stitches, which have now grown to 43 kinds through the efforts of later generations. The basic acupuncture methods are: Qi Zhen, forward grasping, reverse grasping, overlapping grasping, flat sleeves, loose sleeves, sleeves, splitting and needling, needle application, needle extraction, needle roller, needle cutting, braid strand, shuttle pull, Ping Jin, metal sheet, stamping, knot, tail pull, feather needle, velvet, plaid brocade, knitting, and feather needle. There are five kinds of auxiliary needling methods: needling, spreading, pilling, spinning and scraping. There are six kinds of embroidery methods: overlapping embroidery, threading beads, curtain embroidery, nail embroidery, sticking silk, virtual and real needles, etc. In the process of appreciating embroidery, artists often use a variety of stitches to better express the morphological characteristics of objects. For example, to embroider a cat, the wool should be needled, the eyes and whites of the eyes should be needled, and the beard and eyes should be needled. Through the flexible use of needles, embroidered objects can be lifelike and lifelike.

Among the numerous stitches in Suzhou embroidery, the disorderly stitch embroidery has sprung up suddenly, and artists have created many excellent works by using this stitch. Miscellaneous embroidery, also known as "positive embroidery", was founded by Yang Shouyu, a modern embroidery artist, when she was teaching in a regular women's vocational school in 1930s. This stitch method has changed the traditional embroidery method of "closely connecting its needles and arranging its threads". It uses long and short cross lines and layered coloring to express the picture, which is especially suitable for embroidery of works with oil painting, sketch and photography as manuscripts, and its artistic effect is particularly textured. After being taught and popularized by famous Suzhou embroidery masters such as Zhou Youxian, Ren Jixian, Zhu Feng and Yang Shouyu, the disorderly needle embroidery has become one of the main embroidery types in Suzhou embroidery. His works include Lenin by the Lasliffe River, The Statue of Qi Baishi, Tiger Hill and Smoke. On the basis of random needle embroidery, innovative embroidery techniques such as virtual and real random needle embroidery, double-sided random needle embroidery, double-sided different needle embroidery and double-sided different needle embroidery (double-sided and three-sided different needle embroidery) have been developed, which has raised the random needle embroidery technique to a new height.

Suzhou embroidery also has a kind of "coil embroidery", in which the gold thread is coiled and the silk thread is nailed horizontally, so it is also called "nail embroidery". Mainly used for embroidery of dragon robes, official uniforms, dresses, cheongsam, dragons and phoenixes, landscapes, flowers and other decorative patterns. The works are gorgeous and elegant. In its heyday, there were thousands of embroidered mothers engaged in Panjin embroidery in the villages around Suzhou. Up to now, there are still more than 400 old artists processing clothes and decorating flowers for Guangdong, Singapore and other places in chang qiao zhen Xinnan Village. Young people are unwilling to learn this art because it is boring and the salary is low. Panjin embroidery has become a trend of lack of successors.

The technical characteristics of Suzhou embroidery can be roughly summarized as "flat (flat embroidery surface), neat (neat stitch), thin (fine embroidery thread), dense (tight silk thread arrangement), harmonious (harmonious color), smooth (smooth silk thread), smooth (bright color) and even (uniform leather head)", which is different from embroidery in other areas of China. Suzhou embroidery varieties can be divided into two categories. One is daily necessities. There are daily necessities, such as wallet bags, seasoning bags, glasses bags, folding fan bags, business card bags, pockets, round fans, mirror covers, small pendants and so on. There are clothing, shoes and hats, such as shawls, cheongsam, skirts, vests, bibs, shirts, tiger-headed shoes, tiger-headed hats, as well as Japanese kimonos and hanbok. There are indoor products, such as quilt cover, pillowcase, desk circumference, chair seat, chair cushion, door curtain, tablecloth, sofa cushion, electric fan cover, TV cover, air conditioning cover and so on. And other supplies such as official clothing supplements, car accessories, costumes, shroud and so on. Traditional daily necessities patterns have the characteristics of prominent pattern structure center, exaggerated plastic arts and strong decorative meaning. The common forms are single corner flower, diagonal flower, four corner flower, a group of four corner flowers, full bottom flower and so on. In terms of color, Suzhou embroidery has always paid attention to beauty, quietness and color with things, which is flashy but not gorgeous, which is one of the important characteristics that distinguish it from other embroidery. This is consistent with Suzhou people's love for simple and elegant living habits, and is also closely related to the exquisite and elegant characteristics of Suzhou embroidery.

The second is appreciation. There are ornaments (long, square and round table screens) and pendants (pictures, vertical shafts, lenses, nave, couplets, etc.). ), vertical bar (single screen, folding screen, etc. ) and photo album pages. Its subject matter is extensive, including landscapes, figures, flowers and birds, animals, still life, calligraphy and decorative patterns. The most famous masterpieces in appreciation are Kitten and Goldfish. In order to vividly show the fluffy hair and expression of kittens, embroidery workers not only need thousands of stitches, but also must pay great attention to the use of colors. As far as a small cat's eye is concerned, it needs more than 20 colors of lines according to the different light-receiving parts of the pupil to embroider the cat's eye. 1986, at the 6th plovdiv International Spring Expo held in Bulgaria, a piece of Shuang Mianxiu's Maomao exhibited by Suzhou Embroidery Factory won the gold medal. Embroidering goldfish, in order to show the transparent texture of goldfish tail, embroidery workers often have to "split" a silk thread as thick as a hair into 48 pieces to embroider, and the embroidered goldfish is superb, just like swimming in the water, giving people beautiful enjoyment. From 65438 to 0984, a Shuang Mianxiu goldfish exhibited by Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute won the gold medal at the 56th Poznan International Expo.

Suzhou embroidery, as an ancient art that has been spread for thousands of years, has played an important role in beautifying people's lives in all previous dynasties. 1986 10, Suzhou established the China Suzhou Embroidery Art Museum in the ancestral hall of the Ming Dynasty building in Jingde Road, displaying more than 200 pieces of embroidery from the Han Dynasty to the present, including Suzhou embroidery, embroidery, embroidery, embroidery, embroidery, embroidery, embroidery, There are also replicas of silk clothes made in Suzhou, such as the embroidery album of Han Ximeng, a famous embroidery artist in the 7th century, the simulated embroidery of Shen Shou, a Suzhou embroidery artist in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, and modern works such as Shuang Mianxiu with different colors and different stitches, which have become an important window to show the history and fine works of Suzhou embroidery and are welcomed by people. The Chinese Embroidery Art Museum was built in Zhenhu, the birthplace of Suzhou embroidery.