Hasakezhanxiuhebuxiu
01 · Historical Records
Kazakh felt embroidery and cloth embroidery arose together with the nomadic life of following water and grass. In former times, Kazakh girls learned from their mothers, from about the age of ten, how to braid felt, cut cloth, and embroider; embroidered pieces formed the main part of a daughter's dowry and also served as gifts exchanged among relatives and friends, and the ability to embroider intricate, symmetrical patterns was often taken as a measure of a woman's competence in running a household.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Kazakh felt embroidery and cloth embroidery is a folk embroidery art of the Kazakh people of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, popular mainly in the reclamation areas of Hongqi Farm of the 6th Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, the 17th Regiment, and Qitai Farm. Kazakh felt embroidery and cloth embroidery has a long history and is inseparable from the daily life of the Kazakh people; it is mostly embroidered by housewives themselves, forms a familiar part of household everyday articles, and can also serve as gifts exchanged among relatives and friends. Kazakh felt embroidery and cloth embroidery are worked respectively on felt and on cloth; the embroidered content is closely related to grassland life, and the compositions mostly take interlocking symmetrical forms. The designs are ingenious and the embroidery superb, presenting a distinct and unique ethnic style. Felt worked with embroidery is called "flower felt" (huazhan), the most widespread and representative household craft of the Kazakh people. In a Kazakh yurt, the flower felt is the first thing to catch the eye. The embroidery of flower felt follows exacting techniques: the finished patterns are intricate and exquisite, the colors dazzling, and the results are beyond praise. Embroidering flower felt has therefore become one of the most important ways to display embroidery skill, and is highly valued by Kazakh women.
Hua zhan, the patterned felt
The embroidered felt called hua zhan is the most widespread and characteristic Kazakh household craft, the first thing seen inside a yurt.
Interlinked symmetrical composition
Its designs draw on steppe life and are laid out in interlinked symmetrical compositions of marked national character.
Felt embroidery and cloth embroidery
Felt embroidery works the thick woollen ground with appliqué and coiling, cloth embroidery adds fine detail on cotton or silk.
Dowry and gifts
Made by housewives themselves, the embroideries serve as daily furnishings and as gifts between kin at weddings and house-warmings.
The season for felting and stitching
Felting is done on the summer pasture when wool is plentiful, while the stitching is worked in the winter quarters.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
In Xinjiang, Kazakh felt embroidery and cloth embroidery are found mainly in the Kazakh pastoral areas of northern Xinjiang, concentrated in the reclamation areas of Hongqi Farm of the 6th Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, the 17th Regiment, and Qitai Farm; the protecting institution is the Culture, Sports, Radio and Television, and Tourism Bureau of Wujiaqu City, 6th Division. Local herding households still keep the seasonal rhythm of braiding felt on the summer pastures and embroidering in the winter quarters.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Flower felt is the most representative household craft of the Kazakh people and also the most concentrated occasion for displaying felt-embroidery technique. After the transformation of traditional animal husbandry and changes in ways of life, the range of applications for felt and cloth embroidery has clearly narrowed, and most embroiderers are middle-aged or elderly women. In recent years, the farms and local cultural departments have attracted the younger generation back into contact with this craft through competitions, exhibitions, and training, and it is now also applied to tourist souvenirs and home furnishing.
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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