Suzhou embroidery (Nantong simulation embroidery)

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: Suzhou embroidery (Nantong imitation embroidery)

Applicant: Nantong City, Jiangsu Province

Item No.: 317

Project No.: Ⅶ - 18

Time of publication: 2008 (second batch)

Category: traditional art

Region: Jiangsu Province

Type: Extension Project

Applicant: Nantong City, Jiangsu Province

Protection unit: Nantong Shenshou Art Museum Co., Ltd

Introduction to Suzhou embroidery (Nantong simulation embroidery)

Applicant: Nantong City, Jiangsu Province

Nantong simulation embroidery, also known as "Shen embroidery", is an important branch of Suzhou embroidery. In the late Qing Dynasty, Shen Shou, a famous modern embroidery master, was the chief teacher of embroidery engineering of the Technology Bureau of the Ministry of agriculture, industry and commerce. Later, he was invited to Nantong, Jiangsu Province to preside over the women's workshop. Under the historical background of "learning from the west to the East", she absorbed the essence of Western art and created "embroidery" on the basis of China's traditional embroidery. This kind of embroidery creatively expresses the texture of objects by means of rotating needles and virtual and real needles, and harmonizes colors with rich and colorful silk threads. The finished works are natural, soft, rich and colorful in color, which fully shows the power of realism. "Simulation embroidery" is often based on the portraits and landscapes in Western oil paintings, and figure embroidery is the best. Its needling technique is changeable, which shows the vividness of the facial features of the people in the painting, reflecting superb skills. Therefore, Nantong simulation embroidery is also known as "art embroidery", while Nantong area is known as "Shen embroidery". Simulation embroidery is an innovation in the form of traditional embroidery, which opens up a new way for the modern development of traditional Chinese embroidery.

Shen Shou's Xue Bi embroidery manual is the first systematic and complete embroidery theory work in China. It promotes the simulation embroidery and Chinese embroidery art from practical experience to rational understanding, and lays a solid foundation for the inheritance and development of simulation embroidery.

Influenced and inspired by Shen Shou's artistic thought of "conveying the old method with new ideas", the successors of simulation embroidery in Nantong women's workers' training institute created a number of new embroidery types, such as double-sided embroidery, double-sided heterochromatic embroidery, double-sided heterochromatic embroidery and colorful brocade embroidery, which developed the traditional flat embroidery into modern flat embroidery and made the embroidery art reach a new artistic level.

At present, there are few professionals engaged in embroidery practice and related theoretical research in Nantong area, and there is no successor. Nantong simulation embroidery is facing the danger of losing its heritage, and it urgently needs the support of relevant parties to protect and inherit it, so as to make this excellent folk craft get a new life in the contemporary era.