Craftsmanship of Nanjing Yunjin Brocade
01 · Historical Records
The weaving of gold ornament into Nanjing yunjin brocade began around the Yuan dynasty, while colored zhuanghua gold brocade flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
As the most precious grade among brocades, the yunjin craft serves as a typical representative of traditional weaving technique. Nanjing yunjin is woven by hand on the traditional large-pattern wooden loom (dahualou mu zhi ji), with a pattern-hauler (zhuaihua gong) and a weaver (zhishou) working in close coordination. This work is physically demanding and calls for a high level of skill. Old artisans summarize the pattern-hauling technique in a mnemonic verse—"one swing, two press, three copy, four join, five lift, six cup, seven pull, eight scoop, nine scatter"—while the weaver must tread the sheds open with the feet, throw the shuttle with the hands, recite the mnemonics with the mouth, work out the color scheme in the mind, watch every movement, and coordinate the whole body. The main varieties of yunjin fall into four great categories: zhijin (gold-weft brocade), kujin, kuduan, and zhuanghua (polychrome brocade). The first three can already be produced by modern machinery, but the "wahua panzhi" (excavated-flower disc weaving) and "zhuhua yise" (a different color for each flower) of zhuanghua can still be executed only by hand. With the development of modern technology, new silk fabrics are constantly emerging and market demand for yunjin has declined; moreover, the apprenticeship period is long and the work monotonous, dull, and strenuous, so young people are unwilling to take up this work, and the Nanjing yunjin wooden-loom zhuanghua hand-weaving craft is in danger of being lost.
Excavated brocade weaving
Following the pattern, float threads are excavated to open the figured field before it is filled in colour — a sequence no machine can take over.
Colour changes within one blossom
Several colour wefts are changed inside a single blossom so heart, petals and leaves differ yet join seamlessly; the plan must be held mentally and errors mean unravelling.
The nine drawloom calls
Nine memorised calls fix every harness movement, allowing the drawboy and weaver to work from a shared rhythm rather than a written diagram.
The weaver watching in six directions
Treading the shed, flicking the shuttle, chanting the calls, holding the colour plan and watching in six directions at once — the last of these is the final check against error.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
At present it is mainly distributed across five districts of Nanjing: Baixia, Xuanwu, Qinhuai, Jianye, and Qixia.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Craftsmanship of Nanjing Yunjin Brocade.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Among the four categories of Nanjing yunjin, zhijin, kujin, and kuduan have already been taken over by machinery, while the wahua panzhi (excavated-flower disc weaving) and zhuhua yise (a different color for each flower) of zhuanghua can still be performed only by human hands; the value of this craft lies first of all in its irreplaceability. For an irreplaceable craft to truly survive, it depends not on storing finished products in a warehouse but on keeping the large-pattern wooden looms and on keeping the artisans who can sit at the loom for three to five years and master both color matching and pattern-drawing. Once the weaving link is broken, the judgment that exists only at the loom—in flower excavation and in varying the color with each flower—cannot be preserved in words or drawings, and transmission can only be accomplished through the daily back-and-forth between master and apprentice. The concrete difficulties now facing the zhuanghua craft are quantifiable: the apprenticeship period is long, the work monotonous, dull, and strenuous, and young people are therefore unwilling to enter the trade; the number of artisans who can independently complete the entire zhuanghua process is limited, and once the succession of trainees is broken, the craft has nowhere to continue. In the production areas now spread across the five districts of Baixia, Xuanwu, Qinhuai, Jianye, and Qixia, it has become hard to find a single large-pattern loom still at work in the streets and alleys. The key to protection, therefore, is to treat loom, material, and people as bound together: the wooden loom needs the daily use of artisans to maintain its form, zhuanghua pattern books and colored threads need to be kept in volumes so they can be consulted at any time, and artisans need stable settings for transmission and practice, so that young people can learn, in actual weaving, the whole-body coordination of watching every movement, treading the sheds open with the feet, and throwing the shuttle with the hands. If any one of these three is missing, zhuanghua can only come to rest in a museum display case.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Zhu Feng 01-0131
- Zhou Shuangxi 03-1307
- Jin Wen 03-1308
- Guo Jun 05-2728
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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