Liu Shouxian

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Liu Shouxian, Female, Han, from Hongan, Hubei, is a fifth-batch national representative bearer of Minjianxiuhuo (Ⅶ-77). The tradition is documented in Hongan, Hubei. Within the regional tradition and school record of Minjianxiuhuo in Hongan, Hubei: Hong'an embroidery is a folk embroidery art popular in the Hong'an County area of Hubei Province, its pieces most prominently represented by embroidered insoles joined to socks. In Hong'an, these insoles are both an everyday article and a folk art object of special significance; women give them to relatives and friends and include them in their daughters' dowries. The patterns used are mostly auspicious phrases and floral and plant motifs. The craft is said to have begun in the Han dynasty and reached its height of prosperity in the Ming and Qing dynasties. According to legend, Hong'an embroidery began in the Han dynasty and reached its height of prosperity in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Female, Han ethnicity, born in April 1962 in Hong'an county, Hubei Province. Born into a family of embroiderers, she comes from five generations all skilled in embroidery. She began learning embroidery from her mother at the age of thirteen, could draw her own designs and embroider them by the age of fifteen, and by twenty had become a leading embroiderer in Hong'an. She has a thorough command of traditional techniques such as thread embroidery and wool embroidery, and is especially dexterous in her use of thread-embroidery stitches; her selection, alternation and layering of the flat stitch, the shuttle stitch, the braid stitch and the seed stitch are invariably apt. The embroideries she creates display a great variety of colour schemes, and her pattern designs number in the hundreds. Her works include both thread embroidery and wool embroidery; the stitching is deft and endlessly varied, the forms disciplined, the colour bold, and the visual effect both brilliant and plain, romantic and unrestrained. Within the documented technical tradition of Minjianxiuhuo in Hongan, Hubei: Folk embroidery is also known as “needle embroidery,” “stitched flowers,” and “flower embroidery”; since it is mostly done by women, it is also habitually called “women's needlework” (nügong). It is a traditional folk craft: a needle threaded with colored thread is passed through the fabric to form stitches, so that the embroidered marks create specific patterns or characters. Finished folk embroidery pieces are indispensable gifts and decorations in folk activities. The craft has a long history and is closely bound up with the daily life of ordinary people; since ancient times, Chinese folk tradition has circulated the saying “To know whether a family's daughter is clever, look at how good her needlework is.” Folk embroidery embraces a wide range of subjects and rich cultural connotations, and its regions of transmission span the length and breadth of the country, from the great river valleys to the Great Wall frontier. In Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hunan, Guangdong, Sichuan, Beijing, and elsewhere, folk embroidery has developed creatively, giving rise to distinct regional styles. Hong'an embroidery is a folk embroidery art popular in the Hong'an County area of Hubei Province, its pieces most prominently represented by embroidered insoles joined to socks. In Hong'an, these joined insoles are both an everyday article and a folk art object of special significance; women use them to display their talent and skill, and the finished insoles can serve both as gifts and as tokens of affection between men and women. The embroidering, exchange, display, and gifting of these insoles together create a folk atmosphere full of human warmth, enabling Hong'an embroidery to permeate the lives of local people to the greatest possible degree. Combining insoles and socks into a single piece is an expression of folk ingenuity: it extends the service life of cotton socks while producing a warm, tacit sense of closeness between maker and wearer. The makers of Hong'an embroidered insoles are basically rural women with little schooling; through a free artistic form they express their own feelings and wishes, making Hong'an embroidery an important medium through which the broad mass of rural people convey affection and meaning. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Embroidered socks and insoles": Made as matching socks and insoles, they are at once daily wear and a gift article, given to relatives or placed in a daughter's dowry. "Flat, shuttle, braid and seed stitches": Liu Shouxian commands the flat, shuttle, braid and seed stitches singly, alternately or overlapped, in several hundred pattern types. "Five generations of embroiderers": Born into five generations of embroiderers, she was drawing her own designs by fifteen and a local expert by twenty.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

National representative bearer of Folk Embroidery (Hong'an embroidery), a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Liu Shouxian · National Representative Bearer Archive