Chen Shaofang
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
Female, of Han ethnicity, born in 1937, a native of Panyu, Guangdong Province. She was a national representative bearer of Guangdong Embroidery (Guang Embroidery), a first-batch national intangible cultural heritage project, and a Master of Chinese Arts and Crafts. Determined to keep the craft alive, she devoted ten years to the task. With ingenious conception she composed a long handscroll on the traditional theme of hundreds of birds and hundreds of flowers, preserving within it the great majority of Guang embroidery stitches and techniques; the work thus stands as a summative and demonstrative model of the technique. She also drew on the color-composition principles of Chinese and Western painting to create a distinctive 'method of color composition with embroidery silk thread', and she developed an approach to 'modern artistic portrait embroidery'. Chen Shaofang is currently devoting herself to writing a book on the new Guang embroidery techniques she has mastered in recent years, so that they may circulate widely. Chen Shaofang has trained a great many technical personnel, and her two sons and daughters-in-law have inherited the Guang embroidery craft in fairly comprehensive fashion. Her representative works include Muyang Guniang (Shepherdess), Chenxi (Morning Glow), and Lingnan Jinxiu (The Splendor of Lingnan), among others.
Honors & Recognition
Chen Shaofang graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1962. She compiled the book Guangxiu (Guang Embroidery), which served as a textbook for training young students, thereby breaking with the traditional mode of transmission that relied entirely on oral and manual teaching between master and apprentice.
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
- Guangdong Embroidery Ⅶ-20
- Guangdong Embroidery Ⅶ-20
- Guangdong Embroidery Ⅶ-20
Profile
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript. Compiled from official national representative bearer archival records, organized by topic and translated into English. 阅读中文版。