*Embroidery History*

The History of Embroidery
    At present,it is evidence that the earliest pen was present in East Zhou dynasty,but the original embroidery has recordation in Yu and Shun times which is earlier. In “Book of History”, the official dressing system prescribe that painting on the clothes and embroidering on the skirt. And in the Book of Odes,there is a description of “red embroidery on plain clothes”. So there is a conjecture that the ancients take needles as pen,and silk as paper to record living and art before the pen and paper appeared.
    The original embroideries are simple in stitch and subject, mainly used as decoration on the clothes. In Tang and Song Dynasty, the embroidery tecnique continue to mature, and their applications of decoration has extend from clothes to room.There is a tidal current to followed in a rush by the literators that decorating their house with embrodered pictures. In Ming and Qing Dynasty, the embroidery art flourished as never before, and several art genres which were important in effect to offspring was born, such as the Four Embroideries, which are Suzhou embroidery, Guangdong embroidery, Hunan embroidery, Sichuan embroidery. In them, Suzhou embroidery is the most famous.
    In the golden times of Suzhou Embroidery, the genre multiply, and many adepts contest their embroideries.
    The application of embroidery has been popularized in daily life, and the embroidery stitch become various, embroidering become more complicated, the color match of embroidery thread become more ingenuous. Most of the patterns which mean happy, longevity and/or lucky, especially the pattern of flowers and birds, gain the people’s favor. In the 1920s, The random stitch embroidery which invented by Yang Shouyu from Jiangsu province, injected new blood to traditional embroidery.
    The flourish of the embroidey art is closely related to the country’s prosperity. After the Reform, economy become booming, and there are some achievement in the world of embroidery artist. In the love of triditional art and hope of protect the quintessence of a country, we endow the traditional Chinese embroidery with life by innovating the craftworks and enriching the subject.The Chinese embroidery art will certainly get a new record in her life.
The character in embroidery
1.Madame Zhao
    It was said that in the Three Kingdoms’ time,the Wu King’s wife,Madame Zhao had three stunts, which are in machine, needle and silk, that is, brocade, embroidery and silk to light mantle. She were able to embroider the map of “The Kingdoms in the Five Famous Mountains” on a silk kerchief. The third volume of “Chronicles of Famous Painting” by Zhang Yanyuan said:
    the Wu King’s wife,Madame Zhao is the young sister of prime minister. She were good at painting and calligraphy. She were clever and incomparable, able to twine colorful silk thread into dragon and phoenix on kerchief by hand, so this is “Machine Stunt”. The Wu King named Sun Quan once sign: “the Shu and Wei kingdom haven’t pacificate, I loog for drawer to draw out the topographty,” Madam Zhao submitted the picture of the kingdoms, rivers and mountains’ position. Later, she embroidered the topographty of "The Kingdoms in the Five Famous Mountains” on a silk kerchief, than this is “Needle Stunt”. Moreover, she took hair thread to be light mantle by pastern, and this is “Silk Stunt”.
2.Lu Meiniang
    In Tang dynastic Su E’s “Duyang Essay”, there is a record about a woman who good at embroidery:
In the first year of Yongzhen(A.D.805), the South China Sea pay a extraordinary woman as intribute. She was fourteen years old with fine and incomparable skills.She were able to embroider seven volumns “Fahua’s Scripture”, which has a character size smaller than the seed of millet, but the dots and strokes are very clearly and thinner than hair. Moreover, there is no vacancy in title or sentence.
3.Han Ximeng
     Gu embroidery originally means the embroidery of the Gu in Shanghai in Ming dynasty. In the Gu family, Gu Mingshi was famous as a chinshih in the thirty-eighth Jiajing’s year(A.D.1559). His grandson named Gu Shouqian had a teacher named Dong Qichang. Gu Shouqian’s wife named Han Ximeng were good at drawing flowers and embroidery, who was a deputy of a great number skilled workers. Even Dong Qichang surprised at sight, and said: “How wonderful your skills!”In Ming dynasty, the commodity economy had relatively developed. Because of the well-known fame of the Gu’s embroidery in home and aboard, many embroidery manors in the southern Changjiang delta take the “Gu Embroidery” as their brand. The board sense of “Gu Embroidery” there come out.

4.Yang Shouyu
     In the 1950s, Liu Haisu wrote to Guo Moruo to introduce a embroidery master, said she “had original ideas and careful thinking to creation”, and ”able to take needle as pen, silk as painting, let painting and embroidery to be in harmony, has formed her own style, exceeded Suzhou and Hunan Embroidery, and reached the peak of embroidery art. No one haven’t called her ‘Wizardly Needle’ after meet her.” The embroidery master who called “Wizardly Needle” by Liu Haisu is his young sister-in-law, named Yang Shouyu(1896-1981), old named Yang Yun.
In the 1920s, the random stitch embroidery of freely cross,different length and density together,agility and levity, which created by her gave birth to clairvoyance effect of the light and color to the occident oil painting, having the strong third dimension and unique art characteristics.She rectfied the traditional plain embroidery of “knitting the pinhole, alining the thread” which has continued thousands years, miraculously endowed the pin and thread with the expressiveness of writings and colors, set up a new banner in the Chinese four pin-embroidery art, and built up a new landmart for the development of Chinese embroidery.