Minjianxiuhuo
01 · Historical Records
According to legend, Hong'an embroidery began in the Han dynasty and reached its height of prosperity in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
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.
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 · Regional Records & Related Items
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.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
At present, the state of transmission and development of Hong'an embroidery is far weaker than before; it is necessary to advocate it actively and strengthen protection, so that this excellent folk art may flourish unceasingly in the skilled hands of the broad mass of rural women of the region. Liu Shouxian (related inheritor, official archival record): Female, Han ethnicity, born April 1962, native of Hong'an County, Hubei Province. She was born into an embroidery family, with five generations on either side skilled in embroidery. From the age of thirteen she learned embroidery from her mother; at fifteen she could design and embroider on her own, and at twenty she became a skilled embroiderer in Hong'an. She has mastered and excels in traditional techniques such as thread embroidery and velvet embroidery, and is particularly deft in the handling of thread-embroidery stitches; her selection, alternation, and overlapping of the flat stitch, shuttle stitch, braid stitch, and seed stitch is employed with perfect appropriateness. The embroidered pieces she has created vary widely in color and pattern, with several hundred designs in all. Her works include both thread embroidery and velvet embroidery, with deft and ever-changing stitches, rigorous forms, bold coloration, and a visual effect that is at once splendid and plain, romantic and bold. Representative inheritor of Folk Embroidery (Hong'an Embroidery), a project in the fifth national-level batch of intangible cultural heritage.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Zhao Cuilin 05-2687
- Zhang Xiaohong 05-2688
- Liu Shouxian 05-2689
- Cai Yuee 05-2690
- Zhang Juhua 05-2691
- Li Xiayin
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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