Shanghai Rongxiu
01 · Historical Records
Wool embroidery was a craft technique introduced to Shanghai along with the city's opening as a treaty port. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European wool-embroidery pieces and their methods of production entered Shanghai through the church and foreign firms; the earliest products, as in Europe, were mostly decorative fabrics for everyday items such as handbags, slippers and cushions, with floral patterns predominating and a fairly simple color scheme.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Wool embroidery, also called "yarn embroidery" or "plush embroidery," is an embroidery technique in which colored wool yarns are used on a specially made mesh linen fabric to stitch out pictures and patterns. As an imported craft technique, wool embroidery already has a history of more than a hundred years in China. The products made when it was first introduced were, as in Europe, mostly decorative fabrics for everyday items such as handbags, slippers and cushions, with floral patterns predominating and a fairly simple color scheme. In the late 1930s, the five Liu sisters of Shanghai, led by Liu Peizhen, succeeded in making figure portraits with the wool embroidery technique on the basis of improving its craft. In the early 1950s, Shanghai wool embroidery artists such as Gao Wanyu reformed the craft techniques once again, studying color schemes and dyeing the yarns themselves, so that the available yarn colors increased from a fixed few dozen to more than a thousand; at the same time, drawing on the stitching techniques of other embroidery crafts, they applied methods such as thread splitting, color piecing and color adding, which completely solved the problem of color transitions and gradations in embroidered subjects and greatly enriched the expressive power of wool embroidery. The subjects of wool embroidery also expanded from the original floral patterns to figures, landscapes, famous oil paintings and the reproduction of color photographs. Although wool embroidery is a kind of embroidery technique, compared with traditional silk embroidery its wool yarn material is thicker and denser than silk thread, and the stitches used are not complicated — mainly diagonal dot stitch, cross stitch, ba stitch, blended stitch, pile-raising stitch and random stitch — which can be flexibly selected and combined according to the needs of the depicted image for renewed creation. For more than a hundred years, after entering China from Europe, the wool embroidery technique has been improved, enriched and developed by Chinese artists, and has become one of the categories of China's traditional craft and fine art; wool embroidery works created in the past fifty years have also become classics of Chinese craft and fine art — presented as state gifts to friendly countries, displayed in the halls where affairs of state are conducted, or collected by public and private collectors in China and abroad. Shanghai wool embroidery is characterized by fine craftsmanship, varied stitches, dense texture, clear gradations, rich colors and lifelike images; for various reasons, however, the survival of the Shanghai wool embroidery craft faces great difficulties today.
Dot stitch, cross stitch and random stitch
Chief stitches include slanted dot, cross, raking, blending, fluffy and random stitch, freely combined to suit the subject.
Splitting, blending and colouring
In the early 1950s Gao Wanyu and others extended the wool palette from dozens to over a thousand shades and devised splitting and blending to solve colour transitions.
The five Liu sisters and portraiture
In the late 1930s the five Liu sisters led by Liu Peizhen succeeded in wool-embroidered portraiture, widening the craft beyond floral patterns.
Tang Mingmin's split-thread technique
The fourth-batch inheritor Tang Mingmin, born in 1958, merges Chinese embroidery technique into wool work, her subjects including Chen Yun and Song Qingling.
Li Qiang's bent needle and colour wash
The fifth-batch inheritor Li Qiang, born in 1957, is known for portraiture and invented the bent-needle and washed-colour methods.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Shanghai wool embroidery takes Pudong New Area of Shanghai as its main center of transmission, with the Shanghai Pudong New Area Wool Embroidery Association as the protecting institution; practitioners are mostly concentrated in Pudong's wool embroidery enterprises, craft and fine-art institutions and studios. After the 1950s, Shanghai wool embroidery artists drew on the stitches of other embroidery crafts, increasing the yarn colors from a fixed few dozen to more than a thousand, so that the subjects of wool embroidery expanded to figures, landscapes and famous oil paintings.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Tang Mingmin (associated inheritor, according to the official archival record): Female, Han ethnicity, born in February 1958, native of Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province. Master of craft and fine art of Shanghai. In 1975 she joined the Shanghai Hongxing Wool Embroidery Factory to work on wool embroidery; since 2002 she has been employed by the Shanghai Lihui Wool Embroidery Art Co., Ltd. She has integrated traditional Chinese embroidery techniques into wool embroidery, skillfully employing skills such as thread splitting, strand dividing, thread piecing and compound line colors; her embroidered works are of exquisite craftsmanship, capture both form and spirit, and are vividly lifelike. Her representative works include Chen Yun, Deng Xiaoping and Bush, Soong Ching-ling, Western Scenery and An Old Tree Braving Wind and Frost. Representative inheritor of Shanghai wool embroidery, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project (fourth batch). In 2008 she was engaged by the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts as an instructor for the craft and fine-art specialty, and has actively devoted herself to training inheritors. Li Qiang (associated inheritor, according to the official archival record): Female, Han ethnicity, born in December 1957, native of Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province. After 1975 she worked at the Shanghai Hongxing Wool Embroidery Factory creating wool embroidery craft pieces, and later served as head of the artwork creation group and chief technical supervisor of wool embroidery; since 2004 she has been employed as chief wool embroidery artisan of the original-design studio of the Hengyuanxiang (Group) Co., Ltd. She studied under the famous wool embroidery artisans Fan Lingdi and Tang Gendi, and is especially skilled at embroidering figure portraits. She created the curved-needle stitch and the thread-dividing floating-color stitch, making the figures she embroidered even more remarkably lifelike. Her representative works include Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou Meeting Nixon, Deng Xiaoping Meeting Bush, Audrey Hepburn, Portrait of the King of Saudi Arabia, Pine and Crane Extending Longevity, Portrait of Comrade Zhu De, Embroidered Portrait of Sun Yat-sen and Mona Lisa. Representative inheritor of Shanghai wool embroidery, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project (fifth batch).
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Tang Mingmin 04-1817
- Li Qiang 05-2708
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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