Songjin Weaving Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
Song brocade is a brocade that developed in the Song dynasty; because its main place of production is Suzhou, it is known as 'Suzhou Song brocade.' Through development across successive eras, brocade weaving skills were comprehensively improved in the Northern Song dynasty. In the Southern Song dynasty, Suzhou established a court workshop, and at this time a new variety with exquisite texture and a distinctive technique appeared among Suzhou brocades — Suzhou Song brocade. In addition to being used for robes and clothing, it was widely used for mounting calligraphy and painting scrolls; the varieties numbered more than forty. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the range of uses for Song brocade expanded, and especially during the Kangxi and Qianlong reigns (1662-1795) it reached its historical heyday. For this reason, from the Song dynasty onward, Song brocade replaced the warp brocade of the Qin and Han period and the weft brocade of the Sui and Tang period, developing vigorously through the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Suzhou is China's famous ancient silk city, a homeland of brocade and a land of silks and gauzes. In the Tang and Song dynasties, Suzhou became the nation's center of silk production; in the Ming and Qing dynasties it also had the famous Suzhou Imperial Textile Office, whose court weaving and folk silk production and sales both flourished, earning the description 'the northeast half of the city, ten thousand households with the sound of looms.' The origins of Suzhou Song brocade can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn period, when the nobles of the state of Wu, located in the Jiangnan region, already used brocade extensively in daily life. Especially its use in mounting calligraphy and painting enabled these beautiful and sumptuous brocades to be preserved together with precious works of calligraphy and painting. The 'Woven Brocade Scroll of the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss' collected by the Palace Museum is a heavy brocade produced in Suzhou during the Qianlong reign, and can be called a rare treasure. Song brocade produced in Suzhou is finely woven, with a lofty artistic style and the traditional character and features maintained since the Song dynasty. It is clearly distinct from the varieties popular in the Yuan and Ming periods, such as lustrous gold-thread brocade and zhuanghua satin; it is a brocade in which both the warp and the colored weft simultaneously show the pattern, inheriting the techniques of Qin and Han warp brocade and the style of Tang weft brocade, combining the characteristics of both. According to fabric structure, the fineness of technique, the quality of materials, the thickness of the fabric and performance in use, Song brocade is divided into four categories: heavy brocade (zhongjin), fine brocade (xijin), case brocade (xiajin) and small brocade (xiaojin). The production of traditional Song brocade involves many process steps, more than twenty in all from silk reeling and dyeing to the finished woven product. The basic characteristic of its products is a woven structure in which warp and weft jointly show the pattern, employing the unique technique of multi-weft color-changing, which gives the fabric surface richer color threads and structural layers. This technical characteristic was later absorbed by Yunjin and has been transmitted continuously into contemporary brocade weaving. In artistic style, it uses varied geometric forms as a framework, filled with natural flowers and auspicious ruyi patterns, matched with harmonious and contrasting colors, making it brilliant yet not vulgar, archaic and elegant.
Archival Records of Process Steps
The production of traditional Song brocade involves many process steps, more than twenty in all from silk reeling and dyeing to the finished woven product.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Song brocade is mainly transmitted in Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province, and its surrounding areas. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, court weaving and folk silk production and sales at the Suzhou Imperial Textile Office both flourished, earning the description 'the northeast half of the city, ten thousand households with the sound of looms.' The origins of Song brocade can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn period, when the nobles of the state of Wu in the Jiangnan region already used brocade extensively in daily life; especially its use in mounting calligraphy and painting gave these beautiful and sumptuous fabrics wider uses. The Suzhou Silk Museum is the project's protecting institution.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Song brocade is not only an important component of the excellent silk traditional culture of Suzhou, this ancient silk city, but also an outstanding representative of Chinese silk traditional craftsmanship, with high historical and cultural value. Owing to economic transformation and long-term neglect, traditional Song brocade workshops have now ceased production; artisans, tools and patterns have been seriously dispersed and lost. Practical measures are urgently needed to restore and protect them. Qian Xiaoping (recorded in the official archive of the associated inheritor): Female, Han ethnicity, born in 1939, from Suzhou, Jiangsu. Representative inheritor of the Song brocade weaving technique, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the first national-level batch. Qian Xiaoping entered the Jiangsu Provincial Silk Industrial School in 1954 to study silk weaving, joined the Suzhou Silk Research Institute in 1957 to engage in silk fabric design and silk technology research, and from 1966 onward began excavating and researching Song brocade. Over fifty years in the craft, she focused in her early years on the design and research of new silk products, and in her later years on the replication and research of ancient silks, especially ancient brocades. She successfully developed many new silk products, such as 'flowered velvet tabby' (huarongchou), 'wind-feather gauze' (fengyuxiao) and 'wave-pattern crepe' (langhuazhou); in cooperation with the National Museum of China and other institutions, she successfully replicated more than twenty precious silk artifacts of the pre-Qin, Western and Eastern Han, Sui-Tang and Ming-Qing periods, such as the Shang-dynasty 'thunder-pattern figured silk,' the Warring States 'dancer-and-animal pattern brocade' and the Western Han 'red ground with red flowers and deer-pattern brocade,' as well as a batch of Song brocades that were already on the verge of being lost. She persists in teaching apprentices, serves as an adjunct professor at Soochow University, has visited abroad many times to disseminate Chinese silk culture and techniques, and has also edited and compiled a number of works on silk technology.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Qian Xiaoping 01-0132
- Shen Hui
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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