Suzhou Embroidery: A Thousand Li In A Size, Embroidered With A Thousand Fingers.

"We know hundreds of goods in the world, and the scenery here belongs to Suzhou embroidery."

I'll visit Suzhou again.

We went straight to the "hometown of Suzhou embroidery".

　　家家架繡棚，人人飛針巧

As soon as I arrived in Suzhou, I heard the comrades of the Municipal Tourism Bureau say that to understand today's Suzhou embroidery, we must go to the embroidery street of Zhen Hu.

The town lake is located on the coast of Taihu, surrounded by water on three sides.

Up to 1700 meters in the embroidery street, there are nearly 400 embroidery shops and shops.

"Family shelves embroidered shed, everyone flying needle skillful."

A girl or an old woman sits in the workshop and flies away from the needle, a mountain forest, a sea of lakes, a butterfly, a cat, a peony, and a little bit of birth on their racks. The eaves, stones, Dong Yuxuan windows, and modern buildings are becoming more and more vivid on their hands.

Walking to the side of embroidered mother Yao Huifen, she is immersed in creating her own ink and embroidered embroidery. The works of freehand flowers and birds and Wu men bridge beside her are mainly black, medium black, gray, light grey and so on.

Good Suzhou embroidery has the reputation that "painting is better than painting".

According to Pu Qingchun, director of Zhen Hu embroidery management office, at present, the population of the whole town is less than twenty thousand, but the embroidered girl reaches 8000.

Suzhou embroidery has become an important industry of Zhen Hu. In recent years, its output value is more than 500 million yuan, which brings 4500 yuan per capita disposable income to farmers, accounting for 65% of farmers' income.

The town is named by the Ministry of culture as "the hometown of Chinese folk (embroidery) art".

　　繡工有女又有男

The history of Suzhou embroidery is also known as "silk embroidery", also known as "needlework".

According to "Yuan Yuan", Suzhou had embroidered costumes before 2500, and it started from the folk.

In the Ming Dynasty, Suzhou embroidery began to form a unique style of "fine elegance".

At that time, most of the embroidery appreciation articles were made by literati draft, and court embroidery and commodity embroidery were specially designed for royalty.

In the Qing Dynasty, Suzhou was called "Embroidery City". There were more than 150 embroidery houses and 10 embroidery workers.

Today, Suzhou embroidery is divided into two categories: daily necessities and artworks, and daily necessities are concentrated in three fields. One is wedding embroidery, the products are dragon and Phoenix, birds, quilt, mandarin duck pillow, embroidered shoes and wedding dress; two is funeral embroidery, including mourning clothes, mantle, streamers, Shou shoes, etc. three is embroidery for living objects, such as embroidered tablecloth, handkerchief, scarf, bathrobe and so on.

Although these embroidery products are of different uses and different contents, flowers and birds and animals are "eternal themes". The representative works are double-sided embroidered "Cats" and "goldfish".

From 1970s to 90s, the "Suzhou embroidery army" not only produced a large number of daily embroidery products to meet the market demand every year, but also explored a lot in widening new categories, adopting new materials, and applying new technologies, and integrated various techniques such as embroidery and inlay, embedding, printing, sticking, carving and painting to produce a batch of products with modern aesthetic sense.

Suzhou embroidery commodity has rapidly developed into more than 10 categories and more than 2000 varieties, and its products are exported to more than 100 countries and regions.

Embroidery is mainly female, but the creators are not all embroidered women.

We listen to a story: Gu Jia Qiao, who is a "Suzhou master". He likes Su embroidery and deliberately innovates. Since 1999, he has studied the technology of Suzhou embroidery on the basis of his meticulous research, and has created the first two body three different embroidery of human body photography, and embroidered "Moonlight lotus pond" and "Swan Dance" on both sides of embroidery.

In 2005, he created two sided five different embroidery "white cat and panda", and the bright pearl embroidered Oriental Pearl by lighting the details of embroidery, thus achieving a historic breakthrough in Suzhou embroidery.

　　上乘之作講究“針功夫”要觀摩蘇繡精品，景德路上的蘇州刺繡研究所是必到之處。1957年成立以來，該所人才濟濟，良工輩出，將傳統技法發展到40多種，把歷史上尖端繡種“雙面繡”、“亂針繡”、“發繡”等推到精致階段，形成圖案秀麗、色彩典雅、針法豐富、繡工精細的精品特色。與研究所毗鄰的中國蘇繡藝術博物館，陳列自漢代至今的繡品200余件，其中有從北京大葆臺燕王墓、湖南長沙馬王堆一號漢墓、蘇州虎丘塔等地出土的蘇繡繡片等；有清末民初蘇繡藝術家沈壽的仿真繡，以及現代發展起來的雙面異色繡、雙面異色異樣異針法繡等作品，是展示蘇繡歷史和精品的重要窗口。

How to distinguish and appreciate the best quality of Suzhou embroidery?

An expert in Suzhou embroidery told us that apart from distinguishing subjects, materials, and impressions, we should pay more attention to needles and workmanship.

The production of Suzhou embroidery seems simple, but it is complex. A 30 cm embroidery is usually completed in half a month.

Only with meticulous work and precise stitching can embroidery achieve its grade.

Zhao Mingzhu, a research institute that accompanied us, told us that screening embroidery should distinguish the top quality from the inferior ones from four aspects: outline, texture, thread and color.

For example, "chopping" is one of the Suzhou embroidery techniques, which is divided into several parts, and the thinner and the more difficult it is.

Pointing to a "Peony" embroidery, she drew a picture on the paper and said, "at the top of this green leaf, the good hand stitches up the needle at the rendezvous, and sew down with the potential, but the skill is low, and the reason is not clear. There are always two or three needles and bad breath here."

To make flowers and leaves live, they need "acupuncture".

There is no discrimination between genuine and fake embroidery.

At the workshop site, we saw a huge embroidered "bird in the woods", 8 meters wide and 3.7 meters high, which was completed by 12 embroidery workers for 10 months.

Embroidered workers adopt the method of needling and stitching between the virtual and the real, and show the artistic charm of far and near, real and empty, moving and quiet through different layers of color and lines.

When embroidery is made by Su embroidery masters, they often do not use the base map, but only one pattern is outlined, and the rest should be played on their own.

Embroidery is not simply copying and copying. It needs embroidery skills as well as a solid foundation for art.

　　溫馨提示：如今在蘇州幾十個旅游點、幾百家經銷店內，蘇繡隨處可見。蘇繡質量高低一看做工，二看裝裱。一般來說，做工粗糙的繡品整幅用一根線繡制，基本上只繡出個輪廓；而精細作品，在最細微處見功夫。再看裝裱，一幅不錯的作品用了紅木裝裱架，自然不同凡響。一般而言，3米之外是觀賞刺繡作品效果的最佳位置與角度。平庸的繡品，不管從哪個角度看，畫面只是個平面，缺乏層次感和立體感。好作品恰恰相反，遠看不是畫卻勝似畫，近看針腳勻稱、緊湊、細密。