Suzhou Embroidery
Saturday, March 04 2017 Xue Yang
My hometown is Suzhou in the south of China. It is a beautiful city favored by god. Many fantastic crafts were born in this place. Suzhou embroidery is the best of them. As one of the representatives of Chinese culture and arts, Suzhou embroidery enjoys a good reputation of the first of the Top-four embroiders in China. The birthplace of Suzhou embroidery is Wuxian and Suzhou areas which belong to Jiangsu Province. This area has great climate and is rich in silk. It has developed into rich urban communities since ancient times. As a result, these conditions promoted the appearance and development of Suzhou embroidery.
According to the records in ancient books, as early as two thousand years ago, in the Spring and Autumn Period, Wu already had the skills for embroidery clothing. The earliest record on the production of Suzhou embroidery appeared during the Three Kingdoms period. With the history of thousands of years, Suzhou embroidery began to show its charm in the Tang dynasties. Later in the Song Dynasty, Suzhou embroidery gradually has its own characteristics. Suzhou embroidery was just like a young lady at that time, she had the best appearance and the most fantastic creativity in her whole lifespan, but folks were not able to trigger her beauty because they don’t have enough techniques.
During the Qing Dynasty, Suzhou embroidery reached its peak. Portrait of the Italian Queen made by Shen Yunzhi, a master in Suzhou embroidery, was sent to Italy as a national gift and invoked a sensation there. After the People's Republic of China was established, Suzhou embroidery was presented as the formal gift of international exchange more than 80 times and exhibited in more than 100 countries and regions altogether, when more than 100 embroiders masters gave the performance live.
As a kind of artworks made by hand completely, a piece of Suzhou embroidery needs an embroider-maid several months, even a few years to finish. In the ancient times, the production of the Suzhou embroidery has a high demand for the producers. The producers must have great patience since the production of Suzhou embroidery is a long and tough process. You need to concentrate on this work, once you start your first step, you have to think and make sure where you can put the next needle on. If you make a wrong step, you have to remove the needle which will hurt the whole work. Therefore, the process of finishing a Suzhou embroidery is just like winning a battle.
Another typical character of Suzhou embroidery is the using of multiple colors. Both colorways and needle methods of Suzhou embroidery are expected dramatically, the color of a painting seems keep varying endlessly. The technique of "splitting silks and piecing the colors altogether" are created by artists due to long-term practice. Using this technique, a mixture of colors, strong expressions and inherent structure of different textures is demonstrated perfectly. Eventually, though most of rough sketches for a painting are out of the painters, through recreating by the embroidery artists, the artistic achievements are often beyond what the original paintings can be obtained.
Suzhou embroidery represents the culture of Suzhou, which is a perfect city with nice climate and beautiful sceneries; people live there safe and sound for decades and decades. Suzhou embroidery is a representative which shows people's pursuit of beauty and happiness. In recent years, the government has increased the protection of traditional arts and crafts, more and more young men and women volunteer to learn to produce Suzhou embroidery. The crafts of Suzhou embroidery will be handed down to future generations and the beauty of Suzhou embroidery will continue to shine.