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January 13, 2015

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Home » District » Songjiang

Her fingers help pass art heritage down the ages

WITH deft hands, Fu Yongping, 55, carries on the time-honored tradition of Gu embroidery, an ancient art designated as a China intangible cultural heritage. She can sit for a whole day stitching, without a blink of fatigue.

“It’s not boring at all,” she said with a smile. “If you are really into something, it is fun.”

The Songjiang native first learned embroidery in 1978 at the Songjiang Handicraft Factory. At that time, after the end of the “cultural revolution” (1966-1976), ancient crafts were enjoying a revival.

Master embroiderer Dai Mingjiao, who is 93 years old today, was invited back then to teach young girls the art. It at least took 10 years to learn all the different skills, including various stitches, sewing and color selection.

“It’s a technique requiring lots of time and patience,” Fu said.

Gu embroidery, a style that originated in the Songjiang District during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), is often called “painting by threads and stitches.” It was devised by the Gu family, whose works mainly featured landscapes, animals and people in elaborate settings.

One silk thread used in Gu embroidery is thinner than a human hair, while stitch work has to be close and meticulously aligned. Mastering the style requires at least a dozen different sewing skills.

Han Ximeng, a daughter-in-law of the Gu family, was the first to move embroidery out of the decoration realm and promote it as an art form. Her advocacy helped the style become more popular.

Most of her works were inspired by famous paintings created between the 10th and 14th centuries. Her characters in silk captured vivid facial expressions, and her realistic style greatly influenced Su embroidery in neighboring Jiangsu Province.

During the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Gu Yulan, the family’s great-granddaughter, set up the first embroidery workshop and recruited young apprentices.

With such an illustrious history, Gu embroidery was initially created exclusively for royalty. A normal piece — measuring 24 millimeters square — usually takes about three to four months to finish. That time line prevents easy commercialization.

“So it can only be art,” Fu explained.

A silk yarn is typically split into 16 threads for the embroidery. However, patterns such as water waves, fish scales and fog-shrouded mountains in the distance require the yarn to be split even finer into 32 threads.

Biggest challenge

Fu once embroidered a silk replica of a Song Dynasty (960-1279) painting, where the biggest challenge was the wings on a dragonfly.

“They were so thin, with just a touch of cracks,” she recalled. “The 1/32 thread could not accomplish that, so I split the thread further into 2 mao.”

A yarn is comprised of 16 threads, and each thread encompasses 16 mao.

“We seldom use mao because it is so fragile that it can be broken easily upon touch,” Fu said, adding that she has to hold her breath when stitching with the extremely fine strands.

Fu keeps her hands smooth, which helps split the threads. She always applies hand cream after finishing daily housework.

“I have to wait for some time for the cream to be fully absorbed, and then I wipe my hands with a handkerchief because they have to be completely grease-free so as not to stain the silk,” she said.

There are about eight stitching skills used specifically to sew features such birds, fish scales, pine needles, flowers and animals. Thin, even and smooth are the three key factors in perfect Gu embroidery, bringing out the texture of leaves, stones, feathers, skin and other features.

Silk splitting is hard but color matching is the most difficult, Fu said. In replicating paintings, an embroiderer has to precisely pick the correct color from hundreds of different hues. It all comes down to intuition and keen observation.

“You can master stitching skills after four or five years, but if you don’t have the right ‘talent,’ you may never achieve perfect color matching,” Fu said.

Blue mingled with yellow. Grey flecked with red. Green in an abundance of shades. The differences can be quite slight. “Sometimes a man’s hair can have as many as 15 shades, from grey to black, while a fish scale can have up to five shades,” Fu said.

Matching colors

“If I can’t find the right one, I will entwine two colors together with 1/16 threads,” she said. “You have to blend them perfectly with natural shades. They can’t be abrupt.”

In order to master color matching, Fu studied painting and calligraphy. She visits museums every month to cast a close eye on the composition of art works.

“We have to strive to be loyal to the original painting,” Fu said.

Her Gu embroidery reproduces Song and Yuan dynasty paintings renowned for their meticulousness and delicacy: a bird’s flossy feathers, the petals of a flower, a beetle’s antenna.

In recent years, Gu embroidery has become a hot commodity in auction markets. Last June, on China’s 9th Cultural Heritage Day, two Gu embroidery pieces — the “Picture of Eight Children” and the “Monk Budai,” both by master artisan Qian Yuefang — were auctioned for 510,000 yuan (US$82,161) and 440,000 yuan, respectively.

“Embroidery is a niche market in the art world, appreciated and collected by only a minority of people,” Fu said.

Though Gu embroidery nowadays is considered the top of the art, it is probably still less known than Su embroidery because it fell from favor during the rein of Jiaqing (1796-1821). After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, local governments launched projects to rescue the dying tradition, but the embroidery fell from grace again during the “cultural revolution.”

Despite setbacks, Gu embroidery has survived and even thrived. In 1987, the Songjiang Museum mounted a display of contemporary embroidery works.

Fu is doing her part to keep the art heritage alive. She is currently teaching Gu embroidery to four students, all around 30 years of age, at Nongqiu Hall in the Zuibai Pond gardens.

“I have been stitching all my life,” Fu said. “I have never given up and I will never give up.”




 

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