Krispin Joseph PX
Su embroidery has been a cultural heritage of China for last many centuries. This intangible heritage is a treasure gathered by the Chinese people with their needful effort, like a dancer on the tip of a needle. Suzhou or Su embroidery is one of the oldest techniques moulded in human civilisation, and it has gradually faded from people’s view in current years.
Breaking the tradition of ‘even embroidery’, ‘random embroidery’ was developed by Su embroidery master Shouyu Lv in the 1930s.
Credit: realinshanghai.com
This embroidery technique was created in Suzhou, established in 514 BC; it became the representative of Chinese embroidery worldwide. In different periods in Chinese history, this Su embroidery exchanged ideas with folk artists and traditional handicrafts, making them the intangible heritage of the nation. Su needlework already has a chronology of more than 2,000 years and is a basic form of handicraft in Chinese art and folk tradition, representing Chinese traditional folk arts. The folk-traditional artists dance with needles to create a variety of stitches, beautiful patterns, and elegant colours and consummate their mastery of these fabulous materials. The delicate and subtle needlework is well known everywhere, and they are praised for their finest thread work, which balances the composition created between dense stitching and smooth finish.
Perhaps most famous is Suzhou’s double-sided embroidery, where a single image can be viewed from either side of a piece or even different images on each side.
Credit: realinshanghai.com
This detailed needlework needs artists’ patience on a silk surface for a while. It uses brilliantly coloured materials to assemble well-proportioned and tidy sketches of almost any clerical setting, individual, animal, or thing. People use this fabric not as a utility object but as artwork. ‘How to express with silk threads the delicate complexion and intangible temperaments of beautiful ladies as depicted in ancient Chinese literature with “skin of jade texture, eyebrows in the shape of distant mountains, eyes with deep emotions”, mentioned in Google Art and Culture.
Credit: realinshanghai.com
Traditional Su embroidery practitioners follow Western art to create beautiful embroidery works. A version of ‘The Kiss’ in Su embroidery style developed by Shouyu Lv in 1930 is popular in the Chinese-Western world. In this method, not only is uniformity anguished, but threads other than silk are also welcomed. ‘Random embroidery’ techniques are often utilised in silk embroideries comparing Western oil artworks, obtaining greater expressiveness.
Su embroidery was used as decoration in homes for wealthy people then. This fabric is used for decorating shoes, pillows, purses and other valuable things. Chinese women do this su embroidery as part of their pledging love for their lover.
